No One Will Save You

• Written, Directed, and Produced by Brian Duffield
• September 19, 2023 (New York and Los Angeles) / September 22, 2023 (US)
• Hulu

An exiled anxiety-ridden homebody must battle aliens who are invading are invading Earth.

I went into No One Will Save You with mid-tier expectations. There was some hype behind it on social media though the responses to some of those posts read like bots. Besides points for creativity it fails to live up to the hype.

No One Will Save You has a very slow start. From the get-go there is no conversation which is not a bad thing, but the situation warrants something. A lack of dialogue as an opening is good, but when it goes on too long you begin to lose context as more and more and is piled on. At least a few words to establish context as they lay on more elements during the course of the narrative. We know Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever)-a character name I had to look up-prefers isolation over people and is mourning the death of someone.

We eventually learn that Brynn has isolated herself because years prior she killed another girl with a rock in a fit of anger. Her friend from the looks of it. Weird thing to me is the town and her friend’s mother are cast as jerks for shunning to outright hating her. It wasn’t an accidental death, but one done in a fit of rage. Why did it happen? I don’t know. That’s really something that required a bit of explanation. At least more clarity than a film with no dialogue could provide. But why are they the bad ones and not Brynn?

And that becomes rather annoying. You can certainly communicate a story without dialogue. I know we have discussed a few films like that here-either short films or feature-length productions. But with all the personal issues they fling at the wall things become confusing and if you wish to not get lost you must rewind and that hurts the narrative flow.

When the weirdness finally begins and the aliens show up they are honestly a lot more like they’re robbing Brynn’s place or simply ransacking it. Terrorizing her is almost incidental. You are left asking if they really crossed the vastness of space just to loot a random house on planet Earth.

They are not just interstellar looters but have what looks like a living hairball inside them they cough up in a way (and length of time) reminiscent of your average housecat. So are they cousins to the Goa’uld or are they a new kind of controlling parasite seeking domination over Earth? That former bit was a joke. These aliens chitter amongst each other like it is dialogue and run around in the buff.

Was No One Will Save You meant to be frightening or was it meant to be silly? That ending just feels really goofy. It completely undercuts anything they were going for-at least into in the realm of scares. And ultimately what was the point of this. Was it a horror film or was it a story about a woman that killed over an incident in her youth? Was it an alien invasion movie or a horror film? And is the girl being left uninfected while everybody else gets a hairball and treats her nice meant to indicate this was a benevolent invasion? Was this a diatribe against hometown life? Did the aliens take over and make everyone superficial? Is this about superficiality and people? Is it supposed to be a movie about a therapeutic horror film? Is this about Brynn finding a way to be able to interact with the world once again on her own terms rather than the terms dictated by the world and the consequences of her actions?

I have no idea because nobody says anything in this movie. I just can’t get beyond Brynn getting a good life despite killing somebody and everybody else getting body jacked by space alien hairballs. Really bothers me. The dancing with the UFOs in the sky during the closing moments felt like an homage to those weird 70s science-fiction movie with a twist and completely unexpected ending. But I’m not really seeing how that ending connected to most of what we got.

Some movies are style over substance. This is one such effort with the need to avoid dialogue more important than telling a good story. We get little context for anything that occurs with our main/only character to make what she did okay other than that is the way it should be because she is the hero.

No One Will Save You is an interesting idea. You won’t be entirely disappointed, but I’m not sure if it will satisfy you. If somebody else turns it on certainly watch it, but otherwise don’t seek it out.