No One Will Save You

Brynn is struggling to live with a mistake that she made years ago, in a moment of anger, that resulted in the death of her best friend. Isolated, and living alone, her quiet life is interrupted late one night by unearthly intruders…

Kaitlyn Dever carries this film, which is not surprising, because she’s great. This is good news for this film—a movie that, like the film A Quiet Place, is largely dialogue-free—because she’s also basically the only person really in the film.

The poster is a big clue as to what the plot revolves around too, so there’s no spoilers in me saying that the film is reminiscent of movies like Signs, or 10 Cloverfield Lane, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s another story where regular people, with their regular lives, find themselves suddenly beset by aliens.

First off, the aliens are great. There’s a classic movie monster stop-motion-like jerkiness to them that is so good. Plus, keeping them so inscrutably alien during the film, their bodies, the way they chitter and gesture, or why they’re even invading, is very effective. There are no answers, the aliens just arrive, and they’re coldly cruel and relentless, which really adds to the terror. On top of all that, it’s a gorgeous film too. Most of all, and let me be clear here… the first act will leave you breathless.

Absolutely breathless. It’s amazing.

The second act… gets a little repetitive. The third act is a mess, an absolute fucking snoozer of a shitshow exacerbated by the whole pointless lack of dialogue gimmick, which not only prevents the film from finding any solid narrative ground, but makes its attempted themes of social isolation, trauma, redemption, and forgiveness all seem like half-hearted afterthoughts, almost as if, the only thing the creators wanted at first was to make an alien chase movie, and then someone forced them to add in thematic arcs later. The end result is made all the more disappointing due to the undeniable strength of that first act.

Especially because the ending lays a big old steaming turd right in your lap.

It’s an especially insidious turd too, trumpeting a message that basically directly states that “politics” is ultimately unimportant, that it’s the “divisiveness keeping us apart” that is the true evil, and that despite any crimes committed, despite any harm inflicted, despite any lives that have been destroyed, now that the aliens are nice to me personally, now that they have decided that I’m one of the good ones, and I’m free to live my life, and we wave at each other in a neighborly way… what’s the problem? Let’s go to the dance, and be happy, and just… not mention the invasion or the dead or any of that “negative” stuff. It’s a “no politics” dance, just have fun twirling amongst the bones and ashes of the unimportant people. And then, as a last fuck you, this whole privileged asshole garbage person message is capped off with a final shot implying that if you don’t go along with this idea, then you’re the problem.

What a shit ending.

People were floored by this film, and I have to think that it’s all on the strength of the first act, because it’s otherwise exhausting being reminded yet again of just how many people out there see messages like this as “the dream” they want to achieve, but even then, even with all that shit set aside, I still don’t understand how anyone could be impressed by this film, because the ending, not to mention the whole third act, is fucking terrible.

Thumbs down. Too bad.