“What a piece of work is man!” Neither of the ravenous witches in “You Won’t Be Alone” actually quote Shakespeare, but that astonished sentiment informs every beat of first-time feature filmmaker Goran Stolevski’s ruminative supernatural tale, set in the rustic hillside villages of 19th-century Macedonia.
To which millions of horror movie fans will reply: Uh, no thanks, I’ll wait for something more American, with some dead babysitters in it. Fine. Nevertheless: Focus Features picked up Stolevski’s film for theatrical distribution, so here we are. And I’m glad we are here, even if a recent preview screening had people bee-lining for the exits long before things wrapped up.
In “You Won’t Be Alone,” the hills are alive with the sound of screaming, whenever the presence of Old Maid Maria, the witch also known as the Wolf-Eateress, can be felt. In the film’s opening minutes, the burn-scarred witch (Anamaria Marinca, smiling like a hag who knows she has the upper hand) makes a hard bargain with a peasant woman: Raise your infant daughter, and I’ll come back for her when she turns 16.
