Edwin P. Stevens' Alice is Still Dead comes into the marketplace somewhat coincident with Adrienne, a high-profile documentary about a murder victim, completed by her loved ones. Whereas Adrienne addresses the late actress/filmmaker Adrienne Shelley via the eyes of her bereaved husband, Alice Is Still Dead memorializes a far less high-profile and feted woman, recalled by her filmmaker-brother and others, in what Stevens states upfront is part of his grieving process.
Alice Stevens perished in a shooting in Georgia in November 2013, along with her live-in boyfriend. Though remembered as a lively young nonconformist, she is also stated (and admits as much in her own discovered journals) to being directionless and irresponsible, avoiding society's usual routes of education and career paths. It is asserted that Alice's knowledge of having been yielded up for adoption at birth (to Stevens' never-less-than-loving parents) cursed her with a lifelong sense of abandonment, magnified when another Stevens brother died of a drug overdose.
Alice seemed drawn to abusive men, even provoking them to violence. Yet, for all the recklessness, homicide evidence pointed to a random circumstance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time for a thug act of retribution by a disgruntled ex-employee. Now based in California (where he was married hours after Alice's killing; she was buried in her bridesmaid gown), the haunted Stevens follows the family attending the (racially charged) Georgia murder trial. He acknowledges that whatever the outcome, Alice will still be dead.
The goals to show that Alice Stevens' down-trending young life had value, that however imperfect she might have been, her loss mattered and she did not bring this on herself. Viewers, of course, may extrapolate the raw emotions her to a more universal experience faced by those touched by violent crime and unhealed wounds. Recommended for true crime film collections and library programming. Aud: C, P.