This Friday, Magnet Releasing is set to release the survival horror thriller Alone in theaters and on VOD. Directed by John Hyams and co-starring Jules Willcox and Marc Menchaca, Alone is centered around a grieving widow (played by Willcox) who is just looking to start her life over, but during her move, she crosses path with a mysterious man (Menchaca) who abducts her, and she must find a way to survive his deadly game of cat and mouse.
Daily Dead recently had the opportunity to speak briefly with Menchaca about his role in Alone, and he discussed how the enigmatic nature of his character in the film initially drew him towards the role and his experiences collaborating with both Willcox and Hyams on the project.
Congratulations on the film, Marc. This is such an interesting character that you're playing here because “The Man,” which is all we know you as, is very much shrouded in mystery. I'm curious, was it appealing to you to come into this project and play a character like this? Movies can sometimes overexplain things, but I think with your character in Alone, there’s a really nice balance to him, in terms of what we know versus what we don't know about him.
Marc Menchaca: Yeah, I remember reading that phone call scene that he has, and that really grabbed me because you get to briefly see into what his life is. I think that informed me the most about the character, and I would say that was the thing that really hooked me in when I saw that. Otherwise, he would have been just a one-note character with really no good attributes to him.
Did you talk to John about how this guy would carry himself, how he would put up this false facade at the beginning and working out the subtleness to your character, or was that all in the script?
Marc Menchaca: We definitely did talk about that, about just how he carried himself. Because he does, in an awkward way, carry himself in a very gentlemanly manner at the beginning. That was just fun to play with. I think so much of it came just from the page, seeing his different tactics of trying to reel Jules' character in. John had a lot of suggestions, too. We talked about it, but he also gave me the freedom to do different things. We'd always do takes where he was like, "Just do what you want to do. Give it something different."
You and Jules square off a lot in this film, but the fight scene in the car was absolutely brilliant. Was it an interesting challenge to do a scene like that where everything is so intimate, it's so contained, but it's so guttural at the same time? I think it works incredibly well.
Marc Menchaca: Absolutely. I think that's one thing that John does really well, especially in the fight scenes, I feel like they were all fairly intimate. I felt like that one in particular, he likes to strip it down to the most elementary pieces, so it's kind of dirty and at the same time, it has this intimacy to it that I think makes it beautiful in some way. I would give all the credit to John in those scenes, for making them simple and yet direct at the same time.
Before we go, can you talk about working with Jules in Alone? So much of this movie is just the two of you going back and forth.
Marc Menchaca: Things on Alone just happened naturally. Jules and I, we got to spend a lot of time together. By the time we got to do our scenes that were more intimate between us, we were just very comfortable with each other and had a good laugh while we were doing them. We got to know each other pretty well during that whole process. One of the fun aspects was that we got to shoot the film in order, so it kind of grew as we went. The great thing about working on Alone was that we all knew we were a small film to begin with. Everybody did their work 100 percent, and it got made. And it turned out to be good. You just hope that you can do that again and again in your career.
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Visit our online hub to catch up on our previous coverage of Alone, including Caitlin Kennedy's review and Heather Wixson's interview with co-star Jules Willcox!
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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