Aloners

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2:23

Aloners

2021

1h 31m

Drama

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Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

98%

Tomatometer

48 Reviews

76%

Popcornmeter

50+ Ratings

Jina (Gong Seung-yeon) is the top employee at a call center, but despite talking to customers all day, she has shut out the world beyond her headset; she lives alone, eats alone, sleeps alone, and her cell phone is her constant companion. When one day she's tasked with training a friendly and naïve new hire (Jung Da-eun), her icy armor is threatened. At the same time, she must navigate an incessantly ingratiating new neighbor, and increasingly urgent phone calls from her father, leaving Jina teetering on the edge of an existential crisis, forcing her to confront why she has isolated herself all these years. Riffing on the Korean 'honjok' -- a phenomenon of young people who live alone and skirt social interaction -- to examine the personal traumas of loss and alienation, this subtly poetic directorial debut is a "stirring portrait of the cages we build for ourselves and questions how and when we may want to be free of them," (Ms. Magazine).

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Critics Consensus

A meditation on isolation, Aloners poignantly explores grief, or the avoidance of it, and the technological walls we build around us.

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Claire Lee

Variety

A reflective interrogation into modern loneliness, as well as the silent brutalities of today’s urban life defined by competition, technology and nonstop productivity.

Jun 12, 2023

Full Review

Noel Murray

Los Angeles Times

While the message is pat, the way it’s presented is poignant, thanks to an arresting lead performance from Gong, who manages a tricky balance of chilliness and charm.

Jun 12, 2023

Full Review

Simon Abrams

RogerEbert.com

The bittersweet Korean drama “Aloners” works best when it’s a character study about an isolated thirtysomething’s behavior instead of whatever her creators think should be done about it.

Rated: 3/4

Jun 9, 2023

Full Review

Jericho Tadeo

MovieWeb

Hong Sung-eun's feature directorial debut, Aloners, epitomizes the idea that cinema can be a universal language.

Jul 12, 2024

Full Review

Joe Muldoon

Battle Royale With Cheese

With strong, well-developed writing from Hong (who also edited the film) and an impressive performance from Gong –for which she deservedly won two acting awards– Aloners is an astute meditation on loneliness, work, and modernity.

Jul 5, 2024

Full Review

William Schwartz

HanCinema

As a character study Aloners is genuinely fascinating. Jin-ah makes no apologies for her own behavior in person, while constantly making meaningless disaffected apologies to customers over the phone.

Mar 1, 2024

Full Review

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Dani G

A good, little, simple but effective, unknown film

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

06/25/24

Full Review

ko B

This is a movie that realistically depicts the actual situation in Korea. Good movies from famous directors and actors.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

03/13/24

Full Review

Faishal M

Shedding perspective on individuals who may feign a preference for solitude as a way of avoiding stepping outside their comfort zone or to conceal their pain. While some people genuinely appreciate moments of isolation and value social interactions in moderation, this movie primarily explores the intricacies of those who pretend to enjoy being alone.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

01/23/24

Full Review

Born K

A 25% mixture of drama, 25% of psychological thriller and 50% of sobrenatural story. Korea already established itself as a country that know how to make good movies with good stories. While this one have characteristics not too well know in the west - aka people that lives a so lonely live because of work, distancing themselves from even their parents - it shows a reality into a strange form to most of us of the western countries. The directress is Hong Sung-eun which had before some small success movies inside South Korea. The basic premise is a hard working CC call-center girls that lives a lonely life, not knowing even her neighbors. She have a distant life from their parents whom she talks by the way of a phone and a remote camera circuit, watching the daily life of her dad and her sick mother. Everything changes when along while receiving the duty of train a new recruit for her workplace (that means that she must have close connections to teach the work), she learns that the neighbor she saw smoking outside his apartment have died before she saw him, by suicide. Enter the supernatural element on the movie. To worse things even more her mother dies too. From here the movie lost some of the impact and discussion - we can resume that after all this she learns that she can have a live, she must have a live to not become a drone, but not much changes other than the closing relation with her father and depart of the new girl. She gets a new neighbor, that shares the same smoking patterns and talks of her deceased neighbor, and even she starts to take them. I don't know if it is the culture gap that made me lose the interest on the scrip (I am sure of it), but I found it a bit previsible and it could be worked a bit more. It is a movie than is well done but more oriented to oriental culture or workaholics. A 7,0 out of 10,0 / B score.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

11/13/23

Full Review

Esra Y

Tells tale of modern people. Bleak and depressed way we ended up living. Paradox of loneliness we choose by hiding behind our phones and isolation we can't seem to escape from.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

11/02/23

Full Review

Nicole L

so simple yet so relatable and deep.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

08/23/23

Full Review

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Hong Sung-eun

Director

Gong Seung-yeon

Jina

Jung Da-eun

Sujin

Seo Hyun-woo

Seonghun

Park Jeong-hak

Jina's father

Kim Hae-na

Jina's boss

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Aloners: Trailer 1

2:23

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Synopsis

Jina (Gong Seung-yeon) is the top employee at a call center, but despite talking to customers all day, she has shut out the world beyond her headset; she lives alone, eats alone, sleeps alone, and her cell phone is her constant companion. When one day she's tasked with training a friendly and naïve new hire (Jung Da-eun), her icy armor is threatened. At the same time, she must navigate an incessantly ingratiating new neighbor, and increasingly urgent phone calls from her father, leaving Jina teetering on the edge of an existential crisis, forcing her to confront why she has isolated herself all these years. Riffing on the Korean 'honjok' -- a phenomenon of young people who live alone and skirt social interaction -- to examine the personal traumas of loss and alienation, this subtly poetic directorial debut is a "stirring portrait of the cages we build for ourselves and questions how and when we may want to be free of them," (Ms. Magazine).

Director: Hong Sung-eun
Producer: Lee Seung-won
Screenwriter: Hong Sung-eun
Distributor: Film Movement
Production Co: Korean Academy of Film Arts
Genre: Drama
Original Language: Korean
Release Date (Streaming): Jun 9, 2023
Runtime: 1h 31m

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