By Matthew Moorcroft

Solid Recommendation

• Directed by Brian Duffield
• Starring Kaitlyn Dever, Ginger Cressman, Zack Duhame, Geraldine Singer
• PG-13

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Brynn is a solitary girl who lives alone in a remote house. In said remote house, she spends her days taking photos of a model town she is building, and the rest of the townsfolk seemingly either ignore her or are downright spiteful towards her. Something clearly happened to make Brynn like this, and her anxiety inducing trek through the town in the early parts of this home invasion, science fiction horror genre mash up sets the stage.

I don’t think you will see a movie like No One Will Save You in a while, at least until the next Quiet Place movie hits and you realize just how effective a lack of dialogue and reliance on visuals can be. But unlike A Quiet Place, which uses it’s silence as a story device and part of the gimmick, No One Will Save You is almost using it as a purely thematically driven and situational. Brynn isn’t talking cause she can’t. Brynn isn’t talking cause she literally is alone.

And I do mean alone. It’s pretty obvious early on that whatever alien invasion is happening in this small town, Brynn is the only one not really affected by what’s going on, and thus begins a smart, tight trip into isolationist horror and creepy sci-fi goodness. For all of it’s worth, No One Will Save You is just a really solid abduction film – the likes of which we actually haven’t seen in awhile. The closest is probably Jordan Peele’s subversive masterpiece Nope but that film is a far different beast then this.

Fire in the Sky meets The Purge is a much more apt comparison, as Brynn fights off different kinds of aliens who seem to have a bigger fascinating with breaking in like robbers then just abducting her. The fun setups that spawn from this mean that the film basically fills it’s breezy 93 minute runtime with as much as it can as often as it can. A telepathic one that can throw you around? Check. A more classic chase through the forest? Check. A spider-like monstrosity that walks on four feet which themselves have ten toes? Check and check.

If all No One Will Save You wanted to be was a simple schlocky sci-fi feature, it would already be a hearty recommendation by how much it commits, but No One Will Save You is also from the same cloth as writer-director Brian Duffield’s prior horror venture Underwater (which he only wrote unlike this where he pulls impressive double duty) meaning it’s got brains. Specifically in how it’s setup is purposefully made to replicate the feeling and chilly embrace of isolation and loneliness. Brynn’s fight for survival is also a fight for her own psyche, depression taking hold at any moment if she isn’t careful.

If it seems like I am being vague on purpose, it’s cause I am, cause No One Will Save You‘s final act deserves to be left spoiled as much as possible, if solely cause of the way it crescendos to those final minutes. For every scare that doesn’t work here – which there is a couple of groaners, more then I think some would like – there is an emotional beat that hits stronger, and by the end it’s almost like you are with the aliens yourself. Contemplative and curious about this specimen of the human species.

In fact, the film isn’t so much scary as it is exceptionally tense. You aren’t going to find an experimentation scene like Fire in the Sky here or the sheer cosmic horror of Jean Jacket from Nope – instead, this is much cut of the cloth of something like a James Wan with how it uses depth of field and long, unbroken takes. A jump scare here or there aside, I would argue it’s not even trying to scare you that much in general, instead feeling much more like a mood piece that occasionally veers into mainstream blockbuster horror territory.

It’s just a shame that Disney/20th Century Studios have decided to dump this unceremoniously on streaming, cause this would have done a killing in theaters. It’s the kind of crowd pleaser horror like Barbarian from last year or Malignant the year before that taps into a vein of the genre not seen in a while. And while it lacks the smarts of Barbarian or Malignant‘s pure insanity, I think No One Will Save You is still a solid horror film amidst this clear horror renaissance. A good time!