No One Will Save You is Maximum Sci-Fi Horror

No One Will Save You touched down on Hulu yesterday, and I have a lot of thoughts on the movie that left me with my bedroom lights on when I went to sleep. 👽

As the horror king himself, Stephen King, said on Twitter, “Brilliant, daring, involving, scary. You have to go back over 60 years, to a Twilight Zone episode called ‘The Invaders,’ to find anything remotely like it.”

The nearly dialogue-less movie (I emphasize this because there’s maybe 10 words spoken total), fully led by a powerhouse performance by Kaitlyn Dever, is as clever as it is unsettling. Dever plays Brynn, an exiled anxiety-ridden homebody who must battle an alien who’s found its way into her home.

What people are going to want from this is a Ridley Scott alien invasion, but what they’re going to get is an A24-inspired alien invasion. With a quick, 90-minute runtime, this movie slapped, with the exception of a semi-flawed third act. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s pretty close.

As IndieWire explains, “It would be natural to expect a lengthy chase sequence before building up to a final showdown that reveals the identity of her extraterrestrial assailant. But director Brian Duffield takes the opposite approach, placing Brynn face-to-face with a stereotypical gray alien in the film’s opening minutes.”

“I just wanted to do the thing you’re never supposed to do,” Duffield said. “A lot of alien movies end with ‘Oh here’s the alien!’ And they defeat it and you’re kind of… credits. I hadn’t seen a movie where these guys had traveled lightyears to get here and they’re hiding out. And I thought ‘If they came this far, walking into this girl’s house is not a big deal for them.’ It’s kind of like if we’re hiding from ants in our backyard. It doesn’t make sense in a galactic scale. So that was the impetus: they should just walk in and she should deal with this problem.” Brian Duffield via IndieWire.

The cat-and-mouse game is elevated Sci-Fi Horror that I fully bought into. Critics and audiences vastly differ in their reactions to this one. With 66 reviews from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, the film rests at a 79% while it holds a 59% score from audiences. 

From what I’ve noticed in the movie world, audiences want to be really scared—Ridley Scott, James Cameron type of scared—and when they’re presented with a more indie, artsy exposition, they get upset. The home invasion thriller with both an extraterrestrial and emotional twist worked for me, and I hope it works for you too! 👽