Review: No One Will Save You

“From 20th Century Studios, No One Will Save You is an action-packed face-off between Brynn and a host of extraterrestrial beings who threaten her future while forcing her to deal with her past.” At least that’s what we’re being sold going into this film. Written and directed by Brian Duffield with music by composer Joseph Trapanese, No One Will Save You brings an artistic take on the classic, Home Alone style home invasion.

The story follows our main character Brynn (played by Kaitlyn Dever) through a chaotic and prolonged home invasion by… you guessed it: Aliens. 

We pick up with our protagonist following a series of traumatic events that (without spoilers) leave her a pariah within her hometown. During the first act, Dever does a fantastic job of setting the proverbial hook by ducking to avoid the gaze of her neighbors and psyching herself up for events as mundane as dropping off some mail in town. The film does a fantastic job at stage setting with its use of classical Americana color palettes that could remind any viewer of any small town in the US. 

Things really kick off when one night Brynn falls victim to a home invasion perpetrated by what we’ll describe as a set of stereotypical alien greys. Surviving night one through some improvised alien murder, Brynn is shaken and left rushing to the town that ostracized her for help. While she finds a less-than-warm reception from the locals she quickly discovers that the once-familiar faces of her town are being taken over by the aliens who had visited her the night before. At this point, they’ve noticeably turned their sights on our protagonist and are out for blood, control, or maybe her dollhouse collection.

Having been cast out from her hometown and not knowing whom to trust, Brynn is forced to do what any child of the ’90s hopes they’ll get the chance to… she has to Home Alone this shit. This sets up our second act as a chaotic confrontation with boiling pots, broomsticks, and other improvised weaponry. The action here is tense and desperate in feeling with the rug being jerked out from underneath the viewer so many times that you start to shout at the screen any time our protagonist takes a prolonged breath. 

Now before we address the 3rd act, we must talk about the silent elephant in the room. This movie has only 5 lines of dialogue throughout the whole damn film. This obviously places a lot on Dever’s acting abilities, the overall cinematography, and sound design. Dever’s performance leaves nothing to be desired in this context and cannot be thanked enough. The entire plot in the first act is conveyed through her body language and facial expressions. The sound design does a tremendous job and keeping you engaged without being undermixed or unbalanced. The cinematography while albeit a bit darker than I’d like in some scenes doesn’t feel out of place and is shot from some creative angles that keep the camera focused on its most powerful weapon: Dever’s face. That being said, lingering shots on alien greys for too long does cause some of the spook factor to fly out the window.

Moving on to our final act. This is a movie that touched on a lot of larger themes without resolving them, to the point where it feels like the entire movie was for naught. Our protagonist is finally taken aboard the ship where her mind is probed, which serves to reveal the trauma that left her ostracized by the community. After seeing this, it feels satisfying to finally understand why she was being treated the way she was and living in fear of others. Now a reasonable person would consider this a point where we could resolve some of those traumas leading to her making inroads with the fellow townsfolk. No such luck here though. *****SPOILERS BELOW*****

Our film ends with the entire town assimilated by the alien beings while Brynn is left normal again. She gets the life she wanted and the town accepts her into this manufactured reality without her having to resolve any of those previous traumas with the other townspeople. There is no meaningful resolution of the fractured relationships we’re presented with. In fact, our protagonist is ecstatic that the town will just look her in the eye again, even if they’re forced to do so by alien control. 

Overall, this film needs a few tweaks to some of the work around how the aliens are finally presented to us and it needs a new ending. We spent well over an hour and a half deciphering through body language what happened to this character just to have the slate wiped clean by the aliens she was combatting. 

We here at TBRculture are left giving this film 3.5 turds out of 5.