Lilly Lives Alone (2025) Movie Review: A Poignant, Frustrating Examination of Grief

Losing someone you love can feel like a world-ending event. To be forced into accepting a reality in which they’re gone for good is a massive, difficult ask, but it is expected from each of us by the unspoken rules of community. But what happens when grief refuses to fade into the background and digs its claws deep into your skin to remind you of the pain every waking moment?

Time loses its ability to heal or gloss over the immediacy of loss, as every memory haunts like it happened yesterday, and every wound inflicted feels fresh. This is the visceral thesis of Martin Melnick’s “Lilly Lives Alone,” a psychological horror story that centers grief like a hound from hell, like a chimaera that rears its ugly head just when you think you’ve dealt with the worst. Lily (Shannon Beeby) is an island. She embraces her self-inflicted isolation like a dear friend, living on the outskirts of a small town to limit social interactions. The impetus behind this choice isn’t social disdain or contentment with being alone, but a sense of grief so overwhelming that she cannot bear to be a part of society. This isn’t a one-way street, as society has shunned her, too, making her feel like she doesn’t deserve community by withholding sincere access.

The root of this predicament is the loss of her daughter, which hovers over her existence like a second shadow. Lilly’s method of coping with the pain is to exist for the sake of it, flitting in and out of her supermarket job and indulging in casual hookups in a bid to feel a little less alone. Lilly lives alone and only has one friend in coworker Claire (Erin Way), who seems sweet enough to hold a gentle conversation or two.

But Lilly’s burden is too heavy to warrant human interaction, at least from her perspective, which is why she’s irritated when one-night stand, Jed (Ryan Jonze), starts asking questions about her deceased daughter. Mind you, Lilly has every right to feel annoyed: the man doesn’t leave her alone despite being told to leave multiple times, and he literally goes through her trash in a twisted attempt to know her better. But Jed isn’t the worst thing that plagues her world, as the tenth anniversary of her daughter’s death pounces on her unannounced, manifesting as eerie shadows in the corner of her eye and things that go bump in the night.

Lilly Lives Alone (2025) — A still from “Lilly Lives Alone” (2025)

Melnick opts for intense suspense while framing these troubling occurrences, as we do not immediately identify why Lilly is experiencing such an intense spell of grief or where her guilt stems from. Things are vague enough to lend a sense of ominous dread to the escalating events, including the bloody, macabre opener that recontextualizes everything that happens after. But “Lilly Lives Alone” is the kind of film that lingers in abstractions, leaning away from its thriller elements to soak in the emotional saturation of Lilly’s grief. This works in the first half, as Beeby is endlessly compelling as a hardened woman plagued by the ghosts of her past — the actor’s turn as Lilly is electrifying. She carries the heft of the story alone, just like her character is destined to.

But with vague abstractions come a glaring lack of structure (which isn’t always a bad thing!). This upends whatever the film manages to build brick by brick, as we are robbed of key context once we realize that some questions will never be answered. Even when the atmosphere is bleak, overflowing with blood and head wounds and specters of a child, this imagery does little to help resolve the mystery at the heart of the film. Does it make for a disorienting experience? Sure, but it is one devoid of catharsis, or any semblance of completion, as all of the dramatic build-up seems to fizzle out right before the climax, as if the story’s pertinent questions never existed in the first place.

This is where the frustration seeps in, as “Lilly Lives Alone” is a technically impressive feat that flounders in its emotional content despite having the depth to pull it off. The questions posed by the hounds of grief are worthwhile, as they challenge the accepted notion of “moving on,” along with the socially accepted methods of self-conduct after we lose someone forever. How can we outrun the memories of someone who can never be replaced, and how can we ever begin to feel numb to the absence of someone who felt like a lifeline? Alas, these questions are toyed with but never dived deeper into, making “Lilly Lives Alone” a fragmented experience that leaves a lot to be desired.