Editorials

‘You Won’t Be Alone’ Explores What It Means To Be Human

Uterus Horror is a subgenre of films that focuses on the experience of growing up with a female gender expression. These films capture the act of becoming an adult and coming into your sexuality, using horror to emphasize and/or act as a metaphor for those experiences. Columnist Molly Henery, who named and defined the subgenre, tackles a new film each month and analyzes how it fits into this bloody new corner of horror.

August 29th, 2024 | By Molly Henery

In 2022, writer and director Goran Stolevski broke into the horror space with his feature film debut, You Won’t Be Alone. A dark fantasy period piece, the film takes place in an isolated mountain village tucked away in 19^th century Macedonia. It’s a fascinating and singular Uterus Horror film. A sheltered teenage girl is given great power, then left to experience the world for the first time all alone.

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Maria (Anamaria Marinca) is an infamous witch known as the “Wolf-Eatress.” When she slips into a home to take a newborn baby, Nevena, the baby’s mother (Sofija Jeremić) makes a panicked deal. If Maria will spare the baby now, the mother promises to give her to the witch once the child turns 16. Maria agrees, but not before taking the infant’s voice. In an effort to trick the witch, Nevena’s mother hides her away in a cave. There, Nevena is raised in complete isolation, having no interaction with (or knowledge of) the outside world, except for her mother’s visits. 

The mother thinks she’s outsmarted Maria, but Maria is far too cunning. On the day Nevena (Sara Klimoska) turns 16, Maria kills the mother and assumes her form. Disguised, Maria goes to Nevena and frees her from the cave before performing a rare spell that makes Nevena a witch as well. Nevena is now armed with retractable black talons and all of Maria’s magical abilities. Maria returns to her true form and begins to teach Nevena how to use her new power. Witches gain their power through blood. Maria tries to teach Nevena to hunt and kill animals so she can drink their blood for power, but Nevena’s childlike sense of wonder makes her simply want to play with the animals. Enraged, Maria abandons Nevena, killing a wolf and putting its entrails in her chest to assume the wolf’s form. Thus begins Nevena’s journey into the unknown.

Curiosity eventually leads Nevena to a nearby village. While spying on the inhabitants, Nevena accidentally kills a young mother named Bosilka (Noomi Rapace). Confused and distraught by her actions, Nevena puts the woman’s entrails in her own chest and assumes her form. The rest of the village take Bosilka’s newfound silence and confusion in stride, assuming perhaps she has gone mad. While Nevena has assumed Bosilka’s form and is living her life, everything is still new to the young witch.

As Bosilka, with the help of the other women in the village, Nevena learns basic skills such as cooking and cleaning, even learning to at least vaguely communicate without speech. She also notices how differently she is treated by men and women while in this body. Bosilka’s brute of a husband roughly tries to have sex with his wife. Since this is an act Nevena has no knowledge or understanding of, she panics and kills the man. Realizing she can’t stay in the village any longer, Nevena removes Bosilka’s entrails from her chest, assuming her true form, and flees.

The next form Nevena takes is that of a young man named Boris (Carloto Cotta), whom she kills before placing his entrails in her chest. While in this body, Nevena is introduced to an entirely different way of life and new skills. With her continued childlike disposition, she learns how to do manual labor such as working crop fields. The change in Boris’s behavior does lead to the village women attempting an exorcism on him, but they believe it is successful, and Nevena returns to a routine. She also experiences her first instance of sexual pleasure, sleeping with a girl while in Boris’s form, which is quite a contrast to her experience as Bosilka. Nevena could have continued happily in this life, but then she finds Biliana (Anastasija Karanovich). A little girl who has fallen from a cliff, Biliana forces Nevena to experience sadness and grief for the first time. Unsure of what to do with this new feeling and not wanting the child to die, Nevena takes the form of Biliana.

Biliana is Nevena’s chance to have a normal life. She re-integrates into Boris’s village as this little girl. She is cared for and taught the way she should have been as a child. Nevena is finally able to have a normal life, despite her lack of voice and hidden powers. Then, You Won’t Be Alone moves to adulthood in the form of Biliana (Alice Englert). Nevena marries a boy she grew up with and lives a happy life. While pregnant with her first child, Nevena’s husband is killed by a boar that was likely Maria in disguise. Not long after Nevena gives birth to her daughter, Maria appears. Maria uses her talon to cut the baby girl’s throat, forcing Nevena to perform the spell to turn her baby into a witch, saving its life.

You Won’t Be Alone tells a compelling Uterus Horror story in two different ways. The first, and most obvious, is in Nevena’s journey, which begins on her 16^th birthday. This is significant in that she would likely have gone through puberty and in many cultures, especially at that time, 16 is the age a girl becomes a woman. It’s also significant because, up until that day, she had never interacted with the outside world. She experiences many things for the first time, but Nevena is given the unique opportunity to experience life from different points of view. 

Her witch powers give her the chance to experience life as a wife and mother, doing the cooking, cleaning, and child caring, but also being viewed as property by men. Her powers then allow her to experience life as a man, learning how to grow and care for crops while having more freedom. When Nevena finally takes the form of Biliana, she has chosen the life she wants to live, while also getting the chance to have the childhood she never had. Nevena takes the form and the life that feels the most authentically her, an ability and understanding some people never find.

The second way You Won’t Be Alone tells a compelling Uterus Horror story is in the juxtaposition of Nevena and Maria. We learn in the film that Maria had a terrible life. She was worked, tricked, sexually assaulted, left ill, and eventually burned alive before becoming a witch. The world was unkind to Maria, so as a witch she became hateful toward humans. Nevena’s sheltered upbringing gave her a very different point of view. She was a witch before she experienced the human world. It allowed her to take on different forms and see the many different sides of humanity. 

Maria hates and fears humans because of how she was treated as a human, which made her a malevolent witch. Nevena loves humans because she experienced life for the first time as a witch and more easily assimilated to human life, making her choose a contented human life. In showing the parallel paths for these two characters, You Won’t Be Alone conveys how much of the human experience boils down to the treatment of others. One can only wonder which side of the coin Nevena’s baby will land on.