No One Will Save You (2023)

Science fiction thriller “No One Will Save You” is a pretty good movie, at least for the first half. It’s the final 40 minutes that greatly test the patience of the audience. What starts out as a thrilling alien invasion story with legitimately frightening, classic horror elements flounders in a too-familiar narrative rut of trauma and healing.

Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) is a loner who lives alone in a large farmhouse far from town. She rarely leaves her safe haven, mostly to avoid the nasty stares from the local townspeople. It’s apparent that something isn’t right, especially when observing the way Brynn is ostracized by her fellow residents. There’s a darkness to her past, and people despise her for it. One night, the young woman is awakened by strange noises in the kitchen. When she goes to investigate, she’s met with an intruder from another planet. Upon their first encounter, it’s abundantly clear that this creature is far from benevolent.

The film turns into a story of survival as Brynn fends off the alien with common household items. She knows how to hide and fight, at least well enough to evade detection for a little while. Writer/director Brian Duffield‘s film is the type of scary that leans heavily on the old fashioned variety, with simple visual effects and no gross-out gore. In a nice departure from other extraterrestrial visitor films, Duffield chooses to show his aliens, which are legitimately scary (those finger feet are the stuff of nightmares, and the vocal sounds the creatures use to communicate will make will make your skin crawl).

This is an atmospheric film that features not one word of dialogue until over an hour in, which means there’s an over reliance on audio jump scares and a lot of repetitive scenes of Brynn breathlessly running from and hiding to avoid detection by the invaders. Dever is a just strong enough actor to carry the film, and I always believed she was in a very real danger. Too bad she doesn’t have a better script to work with.

Duffield throws in a story about Brynn’s traumatic past and a tragic incident that happened with her best friend Maude when the girls were preteens. It’s a shocking reveal, but it jolts the movie in a way that the last half doesn’t work at all. Instead of sticking with a straight horror / sci-fi angle, Duffield tries to take his film to a more abstract plane. It doesn’t work. “No One Will Save You” is ultimately frustrating because it gives little in the way of satisfying closure to the character’s story arc.

By: Louisa Moore for Screen Zealots