“No One Will Save You,” the 20th Century Studios alien/home invasion thriller, is one of the year’s most strangely curious, oddly shaped films. Also acting as a thinly drawn character mystery, it’s bold and risk-taking in its structure. And, oh, the sole character of the movie doesn’t speak a word in it. And while an alien horror as a silent movie sounds daring, it not only arrives a few years too late after “A Quiet Place,” not a lick of it is on par with those riveting Hitchock-ian thrills. And none of this uninspired, head-scratching movie works in the slightest.
Similar to ‘AQP’ in the sense that it’s a horror/alien movie with a lack of dialogue at its center, the film, directed and written by Brian Duffield, at least goes about its silent approach in a different way.
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Kaitlyn Dever plays a lonely, deeply socially awkward young woman who doesn’t really speak. She practices fake smiling in the mirror, she is an outsider with no friends, she plays with dollhouses, and she generally lives a solitary existence at home. There’s also a mystery at play here: why is she like this, and who is the Maude Collins girl she keeps writing apologetic letters to? We glean they haven’t spoken in years, and it’s clearly a painful backstory about the past that haunts the main character (even though it’s incredibly vague in the film). But it’s only elusively teased; all of it is withheld, and by the time we belatedly find out any of the whys of her dark and troubled, we’re exhausted with disinterest.
And then, her silent and isolated existence is suddenly interrupted by noises, lights suddenly turning on in her house, and anarchic disruption. After nine minutes of silent character build-up—which honestly doesn’t tell us much beyond what’s stated above—“No One Will Save You” jumps into “A Quiet Place” mode with a dash of home invasion. An alien breaks into her house, and the young girl, terrified out of her mind, has to try and survive and outwit the alien—who is essentially portrayed like every classic alien figure and is revealed in full within the first 20 minutes (thought to be a creature 101 no-no ala “Jaws,” keep your monster hidden for as long as possible to create suspense and fear).
So while “No One Will Save You” seemingly tries to subvert the tropes of the monster/ alien-in-your-house-that-you-have-to-outwit movie—not to mention most standard screenplay conventions of structure— it’s never successful at it, only harming itself in the process. And no offense, while the movie tries its best, there’s just no John Krasinski at the helm here who truly understands the tense, cinematic build-up of suspense. It’s a busy film. A lot of things happen, chasing, screaming, attacking, running, etc., and yet the film never ever bothers to make a case why you should care, almost forgoing the first act and beginning in media-res in the second.
A heart-in-mouth thriller, “A Quiet Place” worked, in part because there was a family at stake, children that didn’t know how to operate under the rules of aliens, and parents desperate to keep their children safe at all costs, even above their own lives—seemingly something that any viewer that’s had a loved-one for can relate.
“No One Will Save You” doesn’t have much of a character to root for since we never really know what Dever’s wordless character’s problem is other than she’s self-conscious, insecure, and shy (with a hint of that dark past that doesn’t arrive until too late). But the viewer’s sympathy is never properly evoked, and it is never compelling. Duffield’s film decides to go big and for broke, really fast, eschewing act one rules: build your character, the stakes, the world, and empathy for them, and then put them into peril. Of course, the filmmaker tries to make you feel something along the way, and it’s a risky gamble and miscalculation that flies off course almost immediately.
“No One Will Save You” then basically puts Dever’s character in peril for 60 more minutes straight—more or less— and even at a mercilessly brief 90 minutes, it feels like it overstays its welcome by a good 30 minutes. Truthfully, the film should have been a 30-minute short at best, an “I can direct” proof of concept (and fundamentally, that’s true, in theory).
Dever essentially doesn’t talk in the film; she just shrieks, screams, reacts aghast, and runs from terror, but again, 101 crucial, the audience is never given a concrete reason to care or empathize with her other than she’s a young girl in danger. No one wants to see that (she even kills the principal alien at the 21-minute mark, something you usually save for your third act; suspense out the window). Now Duffield is a screenwriter who knows all these rules and tropes and clearly is no dummy.
But none of this narrative rebellion works, and neither does the mystery of who Dever’s character is writing and why, etc. (some former friend, we’re just never at all invested). All of it feels a little bit like trying to break rules before they’ve been fully understood.
“No One Will Save You” then tries to subvert itself again, shifting into more “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers” territory with humans suddenly and inexplicably being taken over by these beings (something about the aliens burying in their throats). It adds a new dimension to the film, but it’s as strangely flat as the rest of the film, which is repetitive, uninvolving, and worse, not at all frightening or tense like a thriller should be.
Dever is a great actress, and Duffield had shown promise; this feels, on paper, like it’s a competently directed movie. But it also seems built on a central and early foundational misstep that makes you just feel like you’re going through the motions of watching an alien/monster/victim movie, but never actively engaged, absorbed, or even caring about what are supposed to be the stakes (the young girl we don’t really know at all because she doesn’t talk or even really communicate?).
“No One Will Save You” is a very bizarrely unremarkable, abnormally lifeless movie, seemingly starting right out of the gate in the second act and then trying to reverse engineer the audience’s sympathy—and everything else— for the unknowable protagonist.
Jump scares in it aren’t scary; musically, it presses the gas pedal way too hard to try and captivate, and color-wise, its comatose green and desaturated look doesn’t do it a lot of favors either. It’s not pretty; it’s not enjoyable or scary, nor does it offer anything insightful, interesting, or new to say about this world and alien invasion milieu.
“No One Will Save You” might as well be subtitled, “But Yourself.” It’s a film ostensibly about—if it’s about anything at all— self-rescue, self-forgiveness, and self-compassion—the latter two having to do with the mystery of the beginning, which is revealed faaaaaar too late for anyone to give a sh*t, to be uncharitably candid about it all. Ultimately a modest, tiny, little self-contained thriller, it’s the type of movie no one should really be too angry at (including this reviewer). But as it bafflingly continues with no spark, it grows more and more frustrating in its ability to provide anything to the viewer than a scared and sweaty young girl being endlessly chased around by silly-looking aliens (shadows and darkness try to obscure the CGI, but it’s not great). By the end of its overlong 90 minutes, if you’re shocked by how noisy but uninvolving a “silent” movie can be (the less said about its inexplicably ambiguous ending, the better).
There’s just no rescuing this movie, and worst of all, it makes the very strong case, unfortunately, that yes, sorry, some movies aren’t worthy enough for the theatrical release, instead, better as filler content on streaming services. [D+]
