A Review of No One Will Save You by Nick Olszyk
Distribution Service: Hulu
MPAA Rating, PG-13
OSV Rating, Unrated at the Time of this Review
Reel Rating, Two Reels
Disclaimer:
This review contains spoilers.
I was very excited to see No One Will Save You.
The trailer
was amazing and promised a high-stakes alien thriller with minimal dialogue and
maximum excitement. For the first forty minutes, it did just that and seemed destined
to be one of my favorite films of the year. Unfortunately, someone decided the
film had to be profound and important. It quickly nosedived into artistic stupidity
until it crashed landed into little more than a poorly written Twilight Zone
episode. What a disappointment.
Byrnn
(Kaitlyn Dever) is living every introvert’s dream. Despite only being in her
mid-twenties, she resides in a huge, immaculately kept house alone with a wide
array of hobbies and a thriving Etsy business making vintage-styled dresses. She
appears to be the town pariah, rarely venturing out of her house and despised by
everyone despite her cheery disposition. One night, she is awoken by a noise
and sees an intruder has entered her dwelling. Foolishly lacking a gun or alarm
system, she opts to hide from this unwanted guest. Nevertheless, he finds her,
and she – to her horror – discovers it is an alien being of the classic grey type. After an
intense struggle, she manages to subdue her attacker, but this is only the
beginning of a series of bizarre and terrifying events.
The
first act of No One Will Save You is one of the best exercises in Hitchcockian
horror in recent memory; it is lightyears ahead of jump scare milieu standard
in the genre today. Driven by pure adrenaline, Brynn weaves her way into and
out of rooms, behind closets and chairs, trying desperately to avoid the entity.
At first, the audience just sees shadows, then a fuzzy profile with weird
noises, until finally the feet are revealed, making clear this is not a human. Eventually,
she makes her way into town only to find everyone uninterested in her plight. Director
Brian Duffield expertly combines light, sound, and camera positions to create
an intense feeling of dread and loneliness. Indeed, no one will save her.
Suddenly
and unexpectedly, it seems like Duffield himself was abducted, and No One Will
Save You was replaced with an off-brand version that only appears human. Eventually,
Brynn is captured by the aliens, who probe her mind and reveal she killed her
best friend – and the daughter of the police chief – during a fight when they
were children. No one – including herself – has forgiven or forgotten. Things
grow more and more bizarre from there. Before the end, Byrnn will have
swallowed an amoeba-like creature the size of a baseball, killed her clone, and
featured in an intergalactic zoo.
It’s clear Duffield
is grasping desperately at something more, turning a compelling invasion
narrative into a stupid art piece. Could Brynn’s happy ending at the end be a
sign that it’s better to live in bliss as a prisoner than misery in freedom?
Could the murder of her clone be the killing of her past sin? No larger meaning
is easily discernable, but plenty have taken the bait. Stephen King called it “bright,
daring, and involving.” Guillermo del Toro went on a bizarre
rant, drawing tenuous parallels to a myriad of Catholic concepts including redemptive
suffering, Jonah and the whale, the Book of Job, and even the Eucharist. Um…no.
Sometimes not only is “a cigar just a cigar,” but it’s much better as a cigar
than anything else.
No One Will Save You is a classic example of a good-thing-gone-wrong. If Brynn had simply attacked the aliens, found a way to dispose of them, and spread the word, it would have been a hundred times better. Instead, her life is left trapped and unresolved, much like the audience that must endure this movie.
This article first appeared in Catholic World Report on October 21st, 2023.
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