Summary
No One Will Save You is a visual spectacle, but the lack of emotion causes you to feel empty when it’s over.
A sci-fi thriller from 20th Century Fox written and directed by Brian Duffield, No One Will Save You is streaming on Hulu. The film stars Kaitlyn Dever in the lead role of Brynn Adams. The story follows a woman living inside her childhood home who struggles as she is alienated from her community. One day, she is woken by strange noises that turn out to be unearthly intruders.
The film begins with us meeting Brynn, getting dressed, and running errands, including dropping off some mail at the post office, visiting her mother’s grave, and heading home to get some cleaning done. She winds down for the night by dancing around the house as some music plays. All of this happens without a single word spoken by anyone.
A strange noise occurs one night as Brynn sleeps, causing her to awaken. As she prepares to head downstairs, she sees something moving that frightens her. Brymm accidentally makes a noise upstairs, and this creature hears it. As she hides from it under the bed, we see the legs of what looks like an alien as it makes a calling noise and heads out her window. One thing leads to another.
I always support films in how they are released, whether by a streaming platform or in theaters. Of course, there have been plenty of movies I wish I could’ve seen on the big screen and didn’t because it was released only on streaming. However, No One Will Save You might suffer if you don’t have a home system to make it feel like a theater. The entire film’s tension is built on the score, the atmosphere, and very little dialogue. This would’ve been an A Quiet Place-style event inside a theater.
Speaking of A Quiet Place, Brian Duffield does some fascinating world-building similar to that movie with his sound team. Brynn’s character doesn’t voice many words throughout the film, so he lets his composer and sound mixing team tell the story of this alien invasion, allowing the tension to be kicked up a notch. No One Will Save You has some of the best sound work you will hear all year.
The film relies heavily on sound, but the weight of the drama is left on the shoulders of Kaitlyn Dever to sell the human aspect of the movie. Brynn is facing her own internal crisis while trying to fend off these alien-like creatures. Dever does a great job of making us feel everything that Brynn felt in each moment she was on the screen. The one downfall of Brynn was her character was severely underdeveloped.
So many elements work for No One Will Save You, but the biggest thing missing is the emotional element they tried to sell. I felt very little connection to Brynn, so I checked out of the last ten-fifteen minutes of the film, where they tried to bring things full circle.
Although that didn’t work for me, I lean slightly on the good side of the quality scale. Do I have issues with the script? Yes. However, Brian Duffield’s world-building is a visual spectacle worthy of a watch. As I mentioned, if you have the choice of watching this on your phone or on your big screen with surround sound, make the right call and watch it on the TV.
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