“No One Will Save You” spurred an unjustifiable amount of anger in me. It is not the worst movie, my expectations for it weren’t high and yet I have not seen a movie I hate this much since “M3gan.” And I despise that movie.
Released to Hulu in mid-September, “No One Will Save You” is an alien movie. While lauded as a fresh take on the well-worn alien invasion genre, my friends and I spent the majority of this movie comparing it to other things. Some were the more obvious alien movies it would have been difficult not to allude to, “E.T.,” “Signs,” “Independence Day.” Others were alien movies to which it alluded a little too much, from copying the cloud in “Nope” to being oddly thematically similar to “The Thing.” We also compared “No One Will Save You” to “Home Alone,” “Us,” “Monsters Inc.,” and a variety of YouTube content, including low-budget fictional found footage videos and Salad Fingers.
I bring up this long list of comparisons to make two points. Firstly, this is not an original movie. It is not creative, it does not contain clever twists, it has nothing to say; about the genre, the characters nor the world at large. Secondly, w a y too much is done in this movie. One film, particularly in as small a world as this one takes place in, should not be compared to that wide a variety of films. Jordan Peele and John Hughes do not make similar movies, yet “No One Will Save You” had us discussing both directors’ bodies of work frequently.
After such a long preamble to this review, you may be wondering, what is this movie, which has such a great spooky title, actually about? But that is a question I cannot answer. Every alien plotline that could have possibly occurred, spare fully going to the planet of another species, occurs in this movie. And it all happens to one character, who also has her own personal dramas going on. And that personal drama is crazy and weird in its own right. A complex movie is not a bad movie but “No One Will Save You” is not complex, it is chaotic and disjointed and after having a slow-burn opening, does not stop throwing wild things at the audience for an hour. This is also when I mention that through all of the alien plots that happen, no one in this movie speaks. I think a sentence or two is said dramatically near the end, but this is a movie with practically no dialogue.
To paraphrase my roommate, a quiet movie allows you to project whatever you feel onto a scene without character input—when all I feel is bored and frustrated, that’s not a good situation. There was nothing in this movie I enjoyed. So much has to be accomplished for a movie that cannot rely on dialogue to be entertaining or create characters viewers care about. There are certainly attempts at entertainment in this movie, but the sheer amount became counterintuitive. Everything blended together and none of it held my attention or any stakes. But the protagonist, and basically sole character in the film, Brynn, was the true downfall of the movie. It is rare I comment negatively on acting. As a critic, my biggest weakness is that I am not good at identifying bad acting. But Brynn needed to carry this movie and she would have been subpar as a side character.
The failure of Brynn does not entirely fall on her actress, Kaitlyn Dever, who I remember not being nearly this bad in a well-written movie called, “Short Term 12.” Brynn’s characterization is just not effective. She is an isolated young woman with a secret. She looks quirky, she is an orphan living in a nice house and now, she is interacting with aliens. That is the entirety of Brynn’s character. So please tell me why I should care in the slightest bit about what happens to her. A script in cahoots with a camera decided she was the protagonist. But she is a character who never speaks, who does not emote clearly and who has basically no backstory. All the viewer knows about Brynn is that other characters hate her for unknown reasons. So why shouldn’t I feel the same? Maybe a fantastic actress could have played this part effectively, but unless the main character was, to bring up “Home Alone” again, a crafty child who you automatically root for, I cannot imagine “No One Will Save You” working with this character in the leading role.
“No One Will Save You”’s one saving grace is its direction and cinematography, which is unquestionably well conceived and well executed. But even that is severely undercut by the fact that the director of this movie is also its writer. So ultimately, there is no saving grace to this movie and thus, unless your intention is to hate-watch, I do not recommend “No One Will Save You” to anyone.
