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| Images courtesy of 20th Century Studios |
American screenwriter Brian Duffield has been synonymous
with modern horror ever since he accepted the task to pen the remake of Spanish
horror film [*REC] into the English language Quarantine. Following that up with writing both of Netflix’s
The Babysitter movies, Underwater, Love and Monsters as
well as his own directorial debut Spontaneous in 2020, the film
worker/horror fanatic in addition to producing Cocaine Bear recently
landed his new alien abduction horror film No One Will Save You at the
hit streaming platform Hulu. A mid-budget
sci-fi/horror thriller produced by 20th Century Studios with a
limited theatrical release before going exclusively to Hulu and Disney+ Star in
Europe, the film starts out amid more than familiar Close Encounters of the
Third Kind territory before shooting to the stars with a strangely moving,
hallucinatory third act previously unseen in UFO horror.
Loner hermit seamstress Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) resides in her
childhood home still coping with the loss of her mother Sarah and best friend
Maude, whiling away her time constructing intricate models of her hometown
which we quickly learn seems to have ostracized the woman over a past traumatic
event. One night she is awakened by
strange noises coming out of her kitchen, leading her downstairs to come face
to face with an alien encounter which goes horribly wrong when she accidentally
kills the extraterrestrial intruder, sparking an all-out invasion of her home
by a wide variety of humanoid alien species over the course of the film. From here the film becomes something of a dialogue-free
chase thriller with zombified humans possessed by alien control relentlessly
pursuing her. Then there’s a unique twist
bringing everything together even this Fire in the Sky and Communion die
hard didn’t see coming.
Deceptively simple with its liberal use of long silences, gazes
and facial expression, No One Will Save You starts out a nebulous grey-men-with-big-black-eyes
movie whose vital chess pieces gradually fall into place. In spite of some less-than-stellar CGI-fire
in one scene the end result is not bad considering the film’s budget and focus
on one actress who says nary a single word.
Much like Communion, the film plays freely with the hallucinatory
aspects with the protagonist’s memories or perspective of reality being
distorted somehow by the aliens. Visually
speaking its closest antecedent is clearly Close Encounters of the Third
Kind but by the end of this unusual mixture of UFO flick and character
study it proves to be more than just another Dark Skies or Extraterrestrial.
What stands out the most, more than anything really, is the
soundtrack by Joseph Trapanese. A
frequent collaborator of Joseph Kosinski and best known for having done both The
Raid films’ soundtracks, the soundscape of No One Will Save You and
musical components are genuinely innovative.
Think of it as an even more extraterrestrial sounding Copenhagen
Cowboy which already had its own form of contact with aliens. Just listening to the score on its own
outside of the film feels like you’re being whisked off of your feet into an
aural arena not governed by rational explanation. Having also scored director Duffield’s debut
film Spontaneous, it’s fair to say we’ll see (ahem, hear) these two together
for some time.
Pretty much the whole thing sits on the shoulders of Kaitlyn
Dever, a supporting actress best known for Short Term 12, Detroit and
Dear Evan Hansen. Having only
seen her in bit parts including but not limited to Them That Follow, the
spunky young actress who also serves as executive producer dives deep into this
sci-fi horror thriller without looking back or batting an eye. Vulnerable and frightened but resourceful and
one Hell of a fighter, Dever conveys all of these emotions and unrealized
survival skills brilliantly without saying anything. Though the absence of dialogue might in
theory feel like a screenwriting stunt, in this case it couldn’t be a more
appropriate approach.
Released briefly in limited venues in New York and Los
Angeles before going to streaming globally, No One Will Save You isn’t
particularly frightening but does offer up UFO movie fans new twists on the
lore with familiar territory being tweaked just enough that we don’t quite
recognize it anymore. An old fashioned chase
survival thriller with elements of Alien, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
and especially Close Encounters mixed together, the film is good for
Halloween which is right around the corner and in spite of the aforementioned
CG it is quite pretty at times visually.
Mostly though, in the filmography of character actress Kaitlyn Dever, it
is nice to see her bumped up to the driver’s seat in a surprisingly rewarding
little alien invasion package.
--Andrew Kotwicki
