No One Will Save You

Brian Duffield’s newest feature, “No One Will Save You,” is a sci-fi horror film with a lot of potential. Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) is isolated from her community. She spends her days alone in her home tinkering with trinkets, cooking, and dancing. Yet this seemingly idyllic life is shaken when her home is invaded by an unearthly creature that, as she tries to escape, will force her to confront her past and the reasons for her solo existence. 

The greatest strength of “No One Will Save You” is the creativity of its foundational decision making. The entire film contains one line of discernable dialogue. The film is built on an incredible use of sound instead. The entirety of the film’s first act involves the invasion itself, and it builds excellent tension with diegetic sound. As Brynn quietly sneaks through her home trying to evade the alien, quotidian sounds like dial tones and a sneaky creak in the floorboards tighten your chest. 

What makes this sequence all the more arresting is the intelligence of Brynn. She plays every move with intention, strategy, and smarts. She fights back. She’s a protagonist to root for, rather than roll your eyes at. Duffield excellently uses the architecture of the house to strike fear and build tension. From creative use of nooks and crannies to creepy, distorted shadows through hammered glass, the charming whimsy of the house we’ve come to know in the daytime devolves into pit-of-the-stomach dread. 

However, while these elements are effective, the longer the scene goes on, the farther it falls from its opening glory. It misses great opportunities for scares and begins utilizing the alien in kitschy ways that take the feeling of fear and turn it into indifference. The opening moments of the first act are rendered as the film’s best, as “No One Will Save You” continues to fall apart due to a frustrating lack of narrative context.

Brynn is mourning her mother, and for reasons that are left long unknown to the viewer, is shunned by her community. It is the invasion that thrusts her past her property line and consequently subjects her to a primal desire to escape the coldness of her environment. And while we’re shown that it’s traumatic for her, we are completely in the dark when it comes to even a semblance of a reason why. The script is not dexterous enough to hold empathy and investment in her plight because it doesn’t direct its attention towards her. It takes us through a tiring cycle of cat-and-mouse capture, release, and recapture sequences with no clarity in sight. 

It’s horror without a grounded center, and therefore, bewilderment at the proposed fear. The themes of social alienation, unresolved trauma, and the question of redemption are mere whispers in a chaotic maelstrom of fatiguing sequences. “No One Will Save You” is a slow burn, but one that you plead with to pick up the pace. Dever is the backbone of the film, giving a performance that’s entirely physical. Without words to supplement the feeling, she carries it all in her body and the minute shifts in her expressions. Unfortunately, while we can read and feel everything she’s giving, she falls second fiddle to egregious repeat alien sequences that undermine the film’s desperately-needed emotional core. 

“No One Will Save You” is tired and confusing. The creative intentions are notable and Dever more than succeeds at pulling her weight, but both are well underserved by the film’s execution. By the time any long-missed background is given, it’s too late and too lazy to have made the waiting warranted. The creativity of the inciting incident is lost from the rest of the run time, and while “No One Will Save You” yearns to be an existential sci-fi escapade, it lacks the necessary context and craftsmanship to clinch the heart. 

On Hulu now.

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