Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes:
No One Will Save You” introduces Brynn Adams (Kaitlyn Dever), a creative and talented young woman who’s been alienated from her community. Lonely but ever hopeful, Brynn finds solace within the walls of the home where she grew up–until she’s awakened one night by strange noises from decidedly unearthly intruders. What follows is an action-packed face-off between Brynn and a host of extraterrestrial beings who threaten her future while forcing her to deal with her past.
Review:
The essential question every person who has a closer encounter of the extraterrestrial kind in the movies asks is whether these aliens are good or bad? The one’s that look like ET or Close Encounters of The Third Kind equal good. Those like the Xenomorph from Alien are bad.
In No One Will Save You the creatures look like the conventional aliens- almond eyes, sullen mouth but with a slight hint of the long skull features of the evil Xenomorphs. They look mostly good and kind and curious, but they don’t speak English, so the heroine- Bryn( Kaitlin Dever), who lives alone in the woods in the house she grew up in, rightly errs on the side of being scared and defensive.
For the entire movie Bryn has no need to speak a word. She lives alone after all, preferring and liking her own company, and where she is not scorned and treated as an outcast by the townspeople. She’s sort of subliminally grieving the death of her mother and bff-Maude (Elizabeth Kaluev). She spends her day sewing dresses for her online clothing store, playing with her intricately carved birdhouse village, and dancing to a few songs of her own imagining. She has an expressive face that hides little.
The circumstances of the townspeople’s hatred and the circumstances of her mother’s and Maude’s death aren’t revealed until the last possible moment by the director, Brian Duffield. Until then, what is being delivered in this alien home invasion horror story is partly Bryn fighting her fears of herself, her alienation, her guilt and her grief, and her desire to seek a reconciliation with all of this.
The invasion when it comes has a creepy personal aspect to it. The objects in her house move, bang and clang with a disarming volume and resentment, almost as if they are refusing her touch and their associations to her. The aliens do little but move from room to room looking for her, chittering to each other in worried tones. Switch the setting to a psychiatric institution and one sees the sly reversal that Duffield is trying out and nicely achieving with audience expectations.
Maybe the aliens are there to help Bryn heal and reconcile? The increasingly psychotropic encounters that echo her past and mirror her fears seem to suggest that. The other silent flight encounters seem to reinforce it. Yet, Duffield refuses the reveal, allowing the audience to make up their own mind. Here’s the twist on the ending for The Invasion of the Body Snatchers- make what you want of it- he seems to be saying.
No One Will Save You is involving and scary and thus gets a 3.5 out of 5 or a B+. It’s streaming on Hulu.
Credits:
Directed by
Written by
Brian Duffield
Produced by
- Tim White
- Trevor White
- Allan Mandelbaum
- Brian Duffield
Starring
Cinematography
Aaron Morton
Edited by
Gabriel Fleming
Music by
Production
companies
- 20th Century Studios
- Star Thrower Entertainment
Distributed by
Release dates
- September 19, 2023(New York and Los Angeles)
- September 22, 2023(United States)
Running time
93 minutes
Country
United States
Language
English
Budget
$22.8 million
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