TL;DR: Loner is a slow-burning found footage horror that spends more time building isolation than throwing scares at you - it definitely asks for patience, but Charlie Robb's performance and an interesting final act make it worth a look if you enjoy quieter horror.
Plot
An aspiring vlogger goes on a wilderness retreat to a cabin in the woods, where he is held captive by an ancient, natural force.
A Found Footage Movie That Actually Slows Down
Found footage horror seems to have reached the point where it feels like every possible idea has already been done - haunted houses, abandoned hospitals, cursed tapes, creepy forests, somebody yelling, "Did you hear that?", followed by ten minutes of running through trees with a camera pointed at the ground - it's a formula that has produced some genuinely great movies, but it's also produced an endless pile of forgettable ones.
Loner doesn't really attempt much new, but it does strip everything back to one guy, one location, and one increasingly uncomfortable situation, which sounds incredibly simply because it is, and whether that works for you depends almost entirely on how much patience you have.
This movie moves at its own pace, and sometimes that pace feels like it's walking through mud, as there are stretches where very little changes, and if you're the type of person who needs something scary happening every five minutes, you're probably going to start looking at your phone. I won't pretend otherwise.
I never felt completely bored though, but I did find myself wishing it would pick things up a little sooner, but I also wanted to see where it was going, and that's a much better place to be than watching a found footage movie that loses me almost straight away.
Charlie Robb Carries Almost Everything
Making a movie with one actor for most of the runtime is a huge gamble, because if that performance doesn't work, the whole thing falls apart, but thankfully, writer and co-director, Charlie Robb keeps things interesting here with his performance, who feels like someone you'd actually come across online, someone who's trying a little too hard to sound confident while quietly hoping people take him seriously.
As things slowly begin wearing him down though, the performance changes naturally, where nothing feels too overacted, and I would say most people would slowly lose their minds if they were trapped in that situation, and that's exactly how it comes across, which is a plus, and keeping someone's attention for around one hundred minutes with basically one person on screen is no easy job, but Robb manages it fairly well.
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The Slow Pace Will Divide People
Let's get this out of the way because it's impossible to ignore - Loner is slow - where you get long sections where the movie is happy to sit back and let things unfold without rushing anywhere, and I do think trimming fifteen minutes would have made a noticeable difference, as there are scenes that make the atmosphere stronger, and there are scenes that feel like they're saying the exact same thing the previous one already covered.
But if the pacing is slow, the atmosphere works a bit better, and this isn't a movie that's interested in filling every scene with jump scares, as it's all about the setting, where the forest feels isolated without constantly screaming at you trying to tell you how creepy it is - there's a constant feeling that something isn't right, even during scenes where technically nothing much is happening, and I do think that's harder to pull off than people give it credit for.
It Looks Better Than I Expected
Low-budget horror doesn't automatically mean cheap-looking horror, and Loner actually looks really good, featuring multiple camera setups that make sense because of the main character's obsession with recording everything, and I never found myself asking why there just happened to be a perfect camera angle waiting for every moment, which is rare for found footage.
The movie also avoids leaning too hard on the shaky camera routine, thank goodness, as watching ten straight minutes of somebody sprinting through the woods while the camera bounces around like it's inside a washing machine stopped being exciting years ago.
When handheld shots do show up here, they actually have a purpose instead of feeling like they're checking off another found footage requirement, so for a smaller independent production, everything feels surprisingly polished without losing that rough, personal feel that works well with this style of horror.
The Horror Is More About Isolation Than Scares
If you're looking for nonstop scares, this probably isn't going to be your favorite movie - there are creepy moments, a handful of effective surprises, and enough strange events to keep things moving, but this isn't one of those horror movies that constantly tries to make you jump.
Most of the tension here comes from watching someone become more uncertain about what's happening around them, and I actually liked that approach, and the movie trusts the audience enough to sit with the uncertainty instead of immediately explaining everything or throwing another loud noise into the mix.
That's also why the ending works better than I expected, because it doesn't suddenly transform into something completely different, but it does take a route that I wasn't expecting, and while found footage movies about people getting lost in the woods usually end in fairly predictable ways. Loner manages to avoid feeling like a copy of everything that came before it.
Did I completely understand every choice? - Not really.
Did I appreciate that it tried something different? - Absolutely.
It never felt like it was desperately trying to become "the next big found footage classic," as it knows exactly what kind of movie it wants to be, and that confidence helps, even with some familiar moments that every horror fan will recognize, there are also little ideas scattered throughout that stop it from blending into the endless list of forest horror movies released every year - even when the movie slows down a little too much, I never got the feeling that it was lazily copying better films - it has its own identity, even if it wears its influences pretty openly.
Final Thoughts
Loner won't convert people who already hate found footage horror, and it definitely asks for more patience than some viewers will want to give it, but even so, Charlie Robb delivers a strong performance, the atmosphere keeps things interesting, and the final stretch heads somewhere that feels fresh enough to leave an impression.