That Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart, Rosaline, the mini-series Unbelievable) is one of Hollywood’s most exciting young stars, and an awards season regular for several years to come, has been established well before her latest turn in writer-director Brian Duffield’s alien feature. But at best, No One Will Save You serves as a spirited showcase of the actor’s startling talents and a neat little addition to her impressive oeuvre; at its weakest, it’s a slightly gimmicky take on John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place and M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs… with a little bit of Home Alone thrown in.
The nearly-wordless thriller begins with a home invasion, which, in fact, is by an alien. Brynn Adams (Dever), the lone resident of her home, is the one under attack; she has no family or friends, the neighbours don’t like her and nobody in the town will even talk to her. The reasoning is explained later, but suffice it to say that Brynn’s all on her own fighting this extraterrestrial visitor with telekinetic powers.
No One Will Save You
Director: Brian Duffield
Cast: Kaitlyn Dever, Geraldine Singer, Dari Lynn Griffin
Duration: 93 minutes
Storyline: A lonely woman must fight off a home invasion from some extraterrestrial visitors while dealing with some past trauma
Somehow, relying on all her smarts (and some makeshift weapons from things around her home), she survives this attack, only to run outside and realise eventually that pretty much her entire town is under siege; aliens of all shapes and sizes have infiltrated the area and are now possessing the townsfolk left, right and centre.
Will Brynn manage to outsmart the aliens and save herself? What is her past trauma that the film keeps hinting at? And most of all, why does everyone hate her? No One Will Save You silently scuttles towards these answers with a mostly-satisfying climax and a couple of less-than-satisfying twists.
The aliens (their big heads and eyes goofily resembling something out of a 60s sci-fi flick) are fun to watch — some tall and lanky, others short and squat — creepily crawling around everywhere, making appropriately scary noises and noiselessly opening doors at will. Brian Duffield (who previously wrote The Babysitter and Love and Monsters) keeps ramping up the tension effectively with a few well-timed jump scares, though the special effects do come off as a tad too amateurish at times.
However, it is Dever’s arresting performance that keeps the film together, though she is limited by the almost complete lack of dialogue in the narrative, and the final stretch (along with the big reveal) not doing her justice. Perhaps, fittingly, in a film titled No One Will Save You, she has to do it all on her own.
No One Will Save You is currently streaming on Disney+ Hotstar
