No one will save you
If you watch the Twilight Zone, you might be familiar with an episode from 1961 called The Invaders. Starting Agnes Moorehead, this episode, features an isolated woman being terrorized by aliens. In this episode, the unnamed woman doesn’t say a word, and it is one of the best episodes of the Twilight Zone because Agnes Moorehead conveys her terror without uttering a word.
So No One Will Save You resonated with me when I saw the trailer. I understood that this was going to be a movie where Kaitlyn Dever, who plays Brynn Adams, was going to have to carry the entire movie on her own. The title gives away the premise.
I’m familiar with Kaitlyn Dever’s body of work, she was in Justified. And she was phenomenal in Unbelievable, which was a miniseries on Netflix in 2019.
The premise of this movie is Brynn lives alone, isolated. It seems like she's happily going through the motions of her life even though you can tell there is something missing. Early on, you figure out that Brynn's mother has passed away. When she goes into town, you understand quickly that nobody likes her, and that she is completely alone in the world. So naturally, when aliens come, she is on her own.
Since this is a spoiler free review, I will say this much. Is this the best movie in the world? No, is it as good as the Twilight Zone episode? No, I can watch that episode of the Twilight Zone dozens of times and never tire of it. However, this is a brilliant concept. A twist, the sci-fi genre that has suspense and horror elements.
Ultimately, Brennan needs to dig deep and confront the past if she wants to survive this alien invasion. She ultimately does, yet the ending isn’t something you would expect. In fact, I find the ending to be a little twisted, and I kind of love it for that. If you want to see someone being tortured and trying to survive an alien invasion when they’re on their own, this is a good movie.
I give it a solid 7.5. What could’ve made this movie better? Better special effects. The aliens in this movie were not scary TV at all, and I found them to be distracting. The feet of the alien were strange compared to the typical rendering you would see in a grey alien, which is very common. It ruined the illusion for me.
If you’re going to give the protagonist the burden of carrying this film on their back for the majority of the hour and a half of the runtime of the movie, the special effects better be good. I need those aliens to be terrifying, and they just were not. And that is also ultimately the downfall of the movie. I literally looked at them and thought, you're scared of that? I think it was insulting to the Dever’s performance to feature such a ridiculous alien CGI. There was so much build up and then that?
Unfortunately, I think because 90% of the CGI aliens were terrible, reviewers have panned this movie more than it should have been. It’s actually a wonderful movie. They tasked Kaitlyn Dever with all the heavy lifting, and she came through.
If you really focus on Brynn’s character arc, you understand that the ending was perfect and unexpected. Try watching it knowing the CGI may not be the best, but Dever will make it worth watching.
No One Will Save You is streaming on Hulu or Disney+ depending on where you live. I definitely recommend you check it out. Comment below and let me know what you thought of, No One Will Save You.
