No One Will Save You (2023, Brian Duffield)

• As usual, I'll go through some non-spoiler thoughts and reactions before getting into spoiler territory, and I will denote where the spoiler discussion begins. You can catch No One Will Save You streaming on Hulu. 

With spooky season right around the corner, expect a glut of horror and genre films to hit theaters and streaming. 

Among the first this year is No One Will Save You, directed by Brian Duffield and starring Kaitlyn Dever. The spoiler free, short version of my reaction is that this is a fun, excellently crafted sci-fi horror film, with an unexpected emotional punch. 

Brian Duffield is carving out an interesting career in genre film. He has writing credits on The Divergent Series: Insurgent, The Babysitter, Underwater, The Babysitter: Killer Queen, Love and Monsters and the upcoming Apply TV+ series Skull Island, set in the King Kong/Godzilla universe Warner Bros. has been working on for some years now. Duffield  also wrote and directed Spontaneous, before taking on the dual roles in No One Will Save You. What's clear, from the two films he's written and directed is that Duffield has a talent for taking genre into interesting, creative directions, and doing so in a way that puts the emotional journey of the characters at the center. Looking at both Spontaneous and No One Will Save You, Love and Monsters seemed to be the screenplay that retained more of his sensibility in the hands of another director. Underwater definitely has some of depth of emotion those films do, but it's also a slightly straight forward underwater monster movie. If you haven't seen it, I'd recommend Underwater. It's a good time. Love and Monsters is as more an adventure comedy than a horror film, but it's also well done and entertaining. 

Spontaneous was about a group of students in a high school who are trying to contend with the fact that for an unknown reason, some of them are spontaneously exploding. They're not spontaneously combusting, as in bursting into flames. They're exploding, like a meat and filled balloon stuffed too full. It is funny, but also surprisingly heart wrenching, while also having a level of gore usually reserved for a more conventional horror film. To call it a horror film would be to skew expectations, because it's much more about the protagonist trying to emotionally and psychologically navigate these strange spontaneous deaths, and the the fact that there's no rhyme or reason to who could be next. It is one of the more unique films in the genre space in the last decade, and elicited a strong emotional connection to the characters and their plight. It's a very well made, if a bit odd, film. 

What's clear with No One Will Save You, is that Spontaneous wasn't a one off. Duffield clearly enjoys playing with and mixing well established genres, infusing them with an emotional core, and taking audiences to unexpected places. He does it again here, and it works. There are some excellently designed sequences which ratchet up the tension and deliver some scares, with a resonant emotional core threaded through all of it. Duffield knows what he's doing. The success with which he designs the tension, and how those scenes play out, instilling that tension in the viewer, is proof of a filmmakers whose studied thousands of hours of suspense filmmaking. The way he weaves such an emotional story into all of this shows he's done his homework where good storytelling is, in general. 

Then there's Kaitlyn Dever. At only 26 years old, her resumé is impressive. She's had memorable turn in Short Term 12, Justified, Booksmart and more. She's been acting since she was 12, and in those 14 years, has put together an impressive body of work. She's excellent in No One Will Save You, and she is doing all of the work. For the majority of the film, she is the one person we are following and/or seeing on screen, and that doesn't even describe how much work she's doing to carry this film. To be this young, doing what she's doing in this film, and pulling it of as well as she does is an accomplishment and a joy to watch. Kaitlyn Dever is going to have a long, interesting career, and she's going to deliver some of the best performances of her generation. We all have so much to look forward to in her future. 

This is really entertaining genre filmmaking. The filmmaking basics are extremely solid, and it takes some interesting creative chances. No One Will Save You is going to be one of those very respectable second tier favorites. It's not going to make the list of scariest films of all time, and it's not going to make many lists of people favorite genre films of all time, but it's going to be the kind of film which has a solid reputation for decades to come. At some point ten and twenty years from now, new generations are going to have a great time rediscovering it, and those of us who've seen it as it was first introduced are going to enjoy sharing our love of it with them. I'll be on the look out for what both Duffield and Dever do from now on. 

SPOILERS BEGIN HERE!

That No One Will Save You contains aliens is not much of a spoiler. For anyone familiar with alien abduction films, that much can be gleaned from the poster alone. The trailer doesn't hide it either. What's new and very different about No One Will Save You is that it mixes together the alien invasion/abduction film, an Invasion of the Body Snatchers aspect and the home invasion sub genre, and does it all with no dialog. More than the mixing of sub genres, the fact that it has no dialog was shocking. For the first ten or fifteen minutes, it seems like No One Will Save You is following in the footsteps of some of the films well known for eschewing dialog in their opening or other important scenes. About fifteen or twenty minutes in, it becomes clear it's not just going to be the opening. It's a bold move. Creating the kind of film which would otherwise be an easy sell for genre audiences, and then deciding to up the difficulty level by making it without dialog is a courageous creative choice. Personally, I'm here for it. 

There will no doubt be people who decide to call this a "gimmick," as they did with A Quiet Place, but that's not a fair critique. I don't tend to think of these things as gimmicks by default, as much as I think of them as creative people using self imposed barriers and boundaries to inspire them to be creative in new and different ways. The narrative Duffield is telling, and the journey his protagonist is on, are thematically served by the decision not to use dialog. Dever's character, Brynn, is isolated within this small town. For all intents and purposes, what she's experiencing in being shunned in a way which was common in colonial and pre-colonial times, and has been used regularly in different fantastical genres. This demonstrates it on a different level with is both symbolic, but also physical and unmistakable. 

The success of the No One Will Save You rests on Kailtyn Dever's ability to convey what is necessary, emotionally, without a word of dialog. She's going through this entire set of events and circumstances, a home invasion, which it turns out is an alien invasion, and selling her reactions and all her emotional beats to the audience without words. It's an impressive magic trick and this film falls flat, in every way, if the lead can't carry that kind of burden. There is a full, resonant emotional journey for Brynn, the protagonist, and the degree to which Dever conveys each step without words is admirable. 

I think No One Will Save You has the capacity to something I've come to think of as a "gateway" film. Gateway films can come in many different forms. It might be a well established, well known director taking some big creative risk, creating something that challenges conventional expectations of storytelling in film, a la 2001: A Space Odyssey. It can be a film that touches on something uniquely generational, like say, Easy Rider, and it enables people to see possibilities in film they hadn't before. Those are two examples recognized as having broadly effected film culture, within the industry and the more obsessive variety of film fanatic, as well as the mainstream and the more casual movie goer. Most of the time though, those gateway films are more personal and individual. No One Will Save You has the capacity to be that for a certain part of the audience that is enthusiastic or open to this kind of genre film, and finds out how much they appreciate a film taking creative chances. There's a generation of filmmaker and film fanatic for whom something like Donnie Darko served as a gateway film. They may not have ever chosen to see something dealing in surrealism and impressionistic tone the way Donnie Darko was, but came out much more willing to engage with films not as straightforward as most of the A to B narrative and filmmaking choices that dominate genre work that manages to get the attention of mass audiences. No One Will Save You is a completely different movie than Donnie Darko, except that it does make some interesting, unusual creative decisions, and it's working in the genre space. There is going to be some part of the audience that sees it who've never seen a genre movie take chances like this, and they're going to enjoy it, because it is so well made. For some of them, that's going to mean they're going to be more open to filmmakers experimenting than they were before.