Resident Alien: Josh Pearce and Arley Sorg Discuss No One Will Save You

There have been some excellent science fiction movies that feature a single, isolated character, like Sam Rockwell in Moon. There have also been some pretty good ones, such as Gravity with Sandra Bullock—and others, not-so-great, like the Brad Pitt-centric Ad Astra. Here we have an entry that falls near the upper end of that scale: No One Will Save You is a one-woman show, focused almost exclusively on Bryn (Kaitlyn Dever), an ostracized loner living in a big empty house on the outskirts of a small town in the middle of nowhere.

Then, one night — aliens! Stereotypical aliens, with bulging black eyes, bulbous heads, and skeletal, gray-skinned bodies. They’re so cliché, they end up serving as shorthand; the movie needn’t spend any time explaining. There’s no questioning if these creatures are mutants or monsters, it’s obvious what they are. And not only are they aliens, they are clearly UFO aliens, which does a whole lot of scene setting with just a single image.

That worldbuilding efficiency is important here because the main catch to No One Will Save You is that there is almost no dialogue (a sum total of two lines, and five words). It requires creative visual storytelling in a way that is not usually sustained for an entire movie. Even films that use ASL or have deaf, non-hearing, or similar characters and situations still usually have people communicating with each other. But the lack of verbal interaction in No One Will Save You serves to underscore Bryn’s isolation. (A similar example is the third season “Fish Out of Water” episode of Bojack Horseman.)

Josh: This movie has some clever things going on. There were one or two places where the lack of dialogue felt like a gimmick — for example, the bus driver’s reaction is unrealistic. But then it started to work because it really reinforces that sense of alienation from Bryn’s point of view. The alien was so cliché that for a while I thought maybe it was a hallucination or other unreliable mental symptom, like in Horse Girl. But, nope, actually aliens.

Arley: Let’s see. I think having low expectations was helpful. It’s trying to be science-fiction horror which is kind of a high bar for me. I think of Alien and Event Horizon when I think of science fiction horror, both movies I loved. Maybe also Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which was formative in my childhood – plus, perhaps, more recently, TV show Nightflyers, which did a lot of great things. No One Will Save You is home invasion horror, which I think is generally very effective for a lot of viewers, and there have been a ton of horror movies about home invasion over the past five or ten years or so, but the home invasion here is committed by aliens. It’s kind of a cool mash up on a superficial level. I do think that as a film it’s an assemblage of ideas hastily strung together into a basic narrative. I thought it was gimmicky at first. It might be gimmicky, really. But there are so many cool ideas that it keeps you going. Somewhere along the way I started getting more into it than I was at the beginning.

Josh: I kept trying to not like this movie, trying to give up on it or dismiss it all as something I’ve already seen before. But then it kept ramping up tension and ideas, a little bit each time, and keeping my interest. I found myself actually enjoying it and paying attention the whole way through, which was a good sign of some creative storytelling. It has a hook that carries you along. When the alien first appeared, I thought they’d basically blown it — showed too much of the creature too early, ruining any tension. But even that went in an unexpected direction. Its feet were creepy, and then the later aliens had such interesting designs, like Stranger Things monsters. I especially liked the semaphore/traffic controller aliens. They were so weird and a little bit disturbing.

Arley: In terms of horror I do think that for people who tend to get scared at horror movies, they’ll probably enjoy this. If you have a lower threshold for scary things, you will get some good moments of atmosphere and creepy images.

Josh: Yeah, that’s something I noted: I would have been disappointed if I’d watched this in theaters because it’s so stripped down. But if you watch it in your house with all the lights off, that really works. It’s not that scary, but it’s atmospheric. The focus on silence and sneaking around a basement reminded me a little of A Quiet Place.

With all the rational debunking of extraterrestrial origins for UAP, modern UFO movies can now only get past the suspension of disbelief if they are intentionally retro (Asteroid City, Vast of Night), deconstructionist metaphors (Asteroid City, Nope), or plain silly (Mars Attacks, Independence Day: Resurgence, Asteroid City). No One Will Save You carries over some of that throwback science fiction horror, especially in the second act, reminiscent of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or The Puppet Masters, or “The Father-thing.”

As the danger escalates, the horror encompasses the rest of the town. The aliens grow larger and more numerous. No one seems willing — or available, or able — to help. And yet, we start to worry less about Bryn and more for the aliens, who keep getting iced by her Home Alone tactics.

This power reversal is in the visual language, as well. Throughout the early scenes, Bryn is often foregrounded, in focus, in a claustrophobic framing, unaware that a shadowy out-of-focus figure is creeping up on her in the background. But there is at least one scene later on in which an alien is shown close up and, over its shoulder, we see an out-of-focus Bryn suddenly stand up from her hiding place and stalk towards it. Who is the monster now?

Josh: Those poor aliens are trying to help, and she keeps killing them. They just want everyone to be happy!

Arley: It almost reminds me of Predator*, or certain kinds of slasher movies. Initially there’s panicked flight, then terrified self-defense, which usually involves getting a few jabs in, and finally, striking back. I will say I give them props for the ending.

Josh: Well this is the guy who also wrote Underwater, and we were kinda surprised by that ending, too!

Arley: Her story, the arc of her emotional motivation, this is a great example of how they take things somewhere unexpected. Like, you know something bad happened, but what actually happened isn’t quite what I had in mind.

It’s difficult to convey a character’s internal emotional state without having them explicitly externalize it, but No One Will Save You manages to show Bryn’s grief, guilt, and isolation — as well as other characters’ pity, hate, and disgust toward her — without a single spoken word. There’s a running mystery of who died and when and why that ties in nicely to the alien plotline by the end of the film.

It explains not only why people treat Bryn the way they do, but also why her brain ends up resisting the alien mind control, because she cannot be happy in a world where anyone knows her past, like people in The Matrix* rejecting a perfect paradise. The conveyance of that emotional journey — more than its horror elements or creature design — may be the film’s real triumph.

Josh: Overall, not bad! A bittersweet resolution. The UFO tractor beam or whatever — the lights were making noise, like we laughed about in The Creator.

Arley: Why are the lights making sound?!

 

*linked to reviews of later films in the franchise.

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Written and directed by: Brian Duffield

Starring: Kaitlyn Dever

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