Halloween is the day to see scary movies. And if you’d rather stay home, you’d do well to check out No One Will Save You, a science fiction horror film. Now streaming on Disney Plus, this movie offers a thrill ride that’s often unpredictable and refreshingly original.
Set in a small, sleepy town in the American Midwest, No One Will Save You is about a damsel in distress. As the title suggests, she has to defend herself in times of trouble. Neighbors, the police, and old friends won’t come to the rescue even as her house is overrun by hostile aliens.
The heroine in turmoil is Brynne (played by Kaitlyn Dever). She looks barely out of her teens and lives alone in the remote house she grew up in. Her parents have passed away, but she seems to be living comfortably. Her work as a seamstress pays the bills. She’s pretty, but she seems destined for spinsterhood. Blame it on her eccentricity and obsession with her huge doll house collection. She’s clearly bent on acquiring more of these toys. Better the dollhouses than owning a multitude of cats.
Yet no one in town seems to like her. Townsfolk ignore her and the boy next door stares at her with contempt. This doesn’t have anything to do with discrimination. She’s as white as any of the people who treat her as an outcast. It’s hinted at, however, that she may have caused the death of a childhood friend.
Just when you thought that somebody in town could be plotting to exact revenge on her, the home of alienated Brynne is swarmed by aliens from outer space. I had clicked on this movie without reading the synopsis so the alien invasion, at least for me, came out of left field. This movie appears to have a lot of tricks up its sleeve.
Much of the rest of the film has Brynne fending off the aliens. That’s when the fun begins, though the scenes promise to leave you cowering. Writer/director Brian Duffield injects the action with Hitchcock-like suspense. Like with Hitchcock, the mayhem is terrifying, cruel, and darkly funny. The aliens look like your typical Steven Spielberg E.T., but they aren’t’ friendly or lovable. Yet they’re actually more human than any of the creatures we’ve seen in the movies. They trip when running on uneven surfaces, and a bigger one gets stuck in Brynne’s burning Subaru. They’re powerful but not infallible.
It’s when the heroine is fending off aliens that the fun begins, though the scenes promise to leave you cowering
The confrontation between Brynne and the extra terrestrial may be likened to the Christmas Eve battle between Macaulay Culkin and the two nitwits burglarizing his home. It’s amusing to see the creatures get a taste of their own medicine, but director Brian Duffield avoids crossing into the juvenile territory of Home Alone and Gremlins. He knows how to make us feel pensive and unsure even if Brynne gets to knock out an alien opponent. These aliens, after all, are very frightening.
Duffield has written a short list of movies with quirky titles such as Jane Got a Gun and Love and Monsters. No One Will Save You is only the second film he has directed. He shoots the movie with a pretty color palette. He gives it a storybook vibe and photographs his star as if she was Anne of Green Gables. The scary stuff happens at night, when the picturesque scenery turns into a no man’s land that’s been captured by humanoids.
Because of the tension that permeates almost the entire film, you may not notice the fact that the movie has no dialogue. It’s a logical device, since Brynne lives alone and no one will talk to her when she’s in town. She’s got nothing to say to the intruders, either.
Having had leading lady duties in such acclaimed films as Beautiful Boy and Dear Evan Hansen, Kaitlyn Dever now steps into the shoes of macho stars Sigourney Weaver and Emily Blunt, who both battled deadly monsters in recent blockbusters. But as directed by Duffield, Dever is dainty and presents herself as a romantic heroine wearing rose-colored glasses. She doesn’t have any dialogue so she is spared from delivering a smart one-liner before killing the enemy. But as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard would declare, “I can say anything with my eyes!” Kaitlyn Dever does just that.
Viewers may find the conclusion a bit off-kilter. It offers a hilarious twist on sci-fi clichés, and it would do The Twilight Zone proud. The choreography is also fine. It’s as if Duffield was saying, “Take that, Steven Spielberg!”
