‘No One Will Save You’ Review: Kaitlyn Dever Gives a Virtuoso Turn in Intense Alien Home Invasion Thriller

Frank Scheck
·3 min read
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There have been plenty of home invasion movies. And there have been plenty of alien invasion movies. So it only seems logical that there would eventually be an alien home invasion movie. Writer-director Brian Duffield has delivered just that with his sci-fi suspenser featuring Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart, Dopesick) in a virtually solo, virtually silent performance as a young woman battling a formidable array of extraterrestrials who are definitely not of the cute and cuddly E.T. variety. Premiering on Hulu to provide scares through Halloween, No One Will Save You proves a singularly intense experience.

So intense, in fact, that it’s a shame that it’s been relegated to streaming. Deeply dependent on its imaginative sound effects, powerful visuals and nerve-jangling score by Joseph Trapanese, the film would benefit greatly from immersive theatrical viewing.

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The story revolves around Brynn (Dever), who lives alone in a large house in the sort of town that Norman Rockwell would have painted. Occupying herself with creating detailed miniature houses, she lives a largely solitary existence after the death of her mother and sister, whose graves she visits frequently.

Brynn’s quiet life is interrupted one night when she awakens upon hearing strange noises coming from inside the house. She soon discovers the cause to be an intruder of the classic “gray alien” variety, complete with large, hairless head, thin torso and shark-like black eyes. It also demonstrates obvious intelligence, including the ability to hang up her old-fashioned rotary phone. Brynn doesn’t take the intrusion casually, doing battle with the creature until she kills it by stabbing it in the head.

Unfortunately, there’s more where that one came from, with Brynn discovering that the townspeople have seemingly been taken over Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style. After vainly seeking refuge in a church and police station, she retreats to her home, barricading the house and arming herself with pots of boiling water and a box cutter. But it’s hard to effectively fight creatures who demonstrate a variety of otherworld powers, including telekinesis.

The ensuing violent encounters are the stuff of nightmares, of both the literal and figurative variety, with one tussle between her and an alien only ending after she bites down hard on one of its appendages. Which she quickly realizes is not particularly hygienic. But the grossness of that doesn’t compare to the slimy hairball thrown up by one alien that proves to have a life of its own.

Duffield, who proved his genre film bona fides with his directorial debut Spontaneous and his screenplays for such films as Love and Monsters, keeps the tension at a fever pitch throughout the proceedings, frequently enhancing the visuals with colored filters giving them an ethereal feel. The writer-director cleverly avoids making the action too one-note via such imaginative touches as Brynn reliving the events of her childhood, like in an extraterrestrial Our Town. The film transcends its narrative limitations with an emotional underpinning involving the central character grappling with her feelings of loneliness and abandonment.

Dever, barely speaking any dialogue, handles the extreme emotional and physical demands of her role in powerhouse fashion, opening her eyes so widely with fright that you hope there was an ophthalmologist on call during the shooting. It’s a virtuoso turn that, combined with Duffield’s cinematic craftsmanship, prevents No One Will Save You from lapsing into the silliness to which it could easily have succumbed.

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