There are over 1.65 million home invasions each year. This one is different.
No One Will Save You is a 2023 Sci-Fi Horror film written and directed by Brian Duffield (Love And Monsters, The Babysitter, Skull Island, Spontaneous). Kaitlyn Dever stars.
The film is twist on the home invasion thriller, with Dever playing a young woman living alone who finds herself beset by an alien intruder. The film premiered on Hulu on September 22, 2023.
Previews: Trailer
No One Will Save You contains examples of the following:
- Accidental Murder:
- Ten years prior to the events of the film, Brynn accidentally killed her best friend when they were both 12 and fighting. She has been the town pariah ever since.
- This also happens with the first alien to invade Brynn's house. After being grabbed by its telekinesis, Brynn grabs part of her ruined model village in a panic. The alien then spins Brynn to face it, causing her arms to fan out and stab the alien in the side of the head. Both are equally shocked by the turn of events.
- Action Survivor: Brynn goes through utter hell over the course of around 24 hours, from being tossed around and stabbed to nearly being possessed by a parasite and then abducted. Against all odds, she manages to pull through and survive practically everything the aliens can throw at her.
- Agony of the Feet: In the aftermath of killing the first alien, Brynn pulls shards of broken glass out of her bare feet.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Brynn breaks down crying and cradles the copy of her as it dies.
- Alien Abduction: Somewhat subverted, as the aliens don't take people away after invading their homes, just place some kind of mind-controlling parasite in them.
- Aliens Are Bastards: These aliens certainly are. Though the fact they choose to spare Brynn at the end shows that they may not be entirely evil.
- Alien Blood: The aliens' blood looks almost black like oil.
- Alien Invasion: What at first seems to be aliens targeting Brynn specifically is gradually revealed to be a much greater operation. Random humans acting like aliens assault her on the bus out of town, ships can be seen moving through the skies in large numbers, and by the end every human but Brynn has been infected with parasites as the aliens patrol the skies.
- Ambiguously Bi: At the end, Brynn dances with both a man and a woman.
- Aside Glance: In the end, Brynn looks directly at the camera with a big smile.
- Bathos: As the spider alien comes down from Brynn's roof to attack, it suddenly makes a misstep, slips, and falls down to the ground comically, complete with a Sudden Soundtrack Stop. Then it immediately jolts back and comes charging at her and things become terrifying again.
- Bittersweet Ending: Brynn survives the night and comes to terms with her guilt at killing Maude but the rest of the town (and possibly the rest of the world) have been killed/replaced/possessed by the alien invaders. Of course, seeing as how Brynn is much happier in a community of alien controlled humans rather than the miserable townsfolk, it's really only bitter for everyone else.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The aliens' motives are indecipherable, especially why they choose to allow Brynn to live among them in the end.
- Call-Back: In the first act, Brynn practices smiling and fails, waves to neighbors and receives no waves back, and practices dancing without anyone to dance with. In the end, Brynn dances with multiple partners, receives friendly waves from her new neighbors, and smiles genuinely at the viewer.
- Chekhov's Armoury: Basically everything in or around Brynn's house that's shown early on comes back later to either help or hinder her. The model, the box cutter, her car, etc...
- Creepily Long Arms: The smaller grey that Brynn encounters in the house has stubby legs and disproportionately long arms for grappling, kind of like a monkey. The one she encounters next, in addition to being much larger, has arms and legs that are far too big for its frame, causing it to walk around like a spider.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Brynn appears to be one with her daily lifestyle of frolicking around her home, due to her being isolated from the rest of the town after murdering a friend in her childhood and losing her mother.
- The Determinator: Despite being a shy, quiet young woman, Brynn simply refuses to give in no matter what horror the invasion brings to her doorstep.
- Developing Doomed Characters: Subverted. The initial chunk of the movie seems like it's going to be doing this for Brynn, but the first alien attack begins much sooner than you'd think and she develops as things go from there.
- Ditto Aliens: All of the human-sized greys appear basically identical.
- Dramatic Spine Injury: An unlucky possessed human falls halfway into a Tractor Beam as it's activating, causing his upper body to be pulled on while his lower body isn't. End result? A very loud snapping sound and a limp corpse folded at nearly a right angle.
- Establishing Character Moment: In the first sequence of the film, we see Brynn go about a typical day. We learn that she's an artistic and whimsical recluse who is disliked by residents of her town for some reason.
- Evil Knockoff: After Brynn manages to rid herself of her implant parasite, the aliens convert it into a duplicate of her and send it to try and kill her, forcing her to slash it's throat open with the box cutter.
- Exposed Extraterrestrials: The greys don't appear to wear clothing of any kind.
- Fighting from the Inside: After being implanted with one of the control bugs, Brynn is placed in a hallucinogenic dream as it controls her body, but manages to fight her way out of it through sheer willpower and pull the parasite out of her throat.
- Flying Saucer: To go along with the aliens being stereotypical greys, their spaceships are jet black flying saucers.
- Friendly Fireproof: The alien tractor beams paralyze humans, blast through doors, and can crush a metal pot flat, but the greys walk through them like they're not even there. Note that this isn't true of the possessed humans, one of whom gets caught halfway in a tractor beam and is nearly folded at a right angle.
- Genre Shift: The first ten or minutes are just Brynn going through a fairly average day, shot in a way that could lead you to believe the whole movie is just a laidback Slice of Life indie flick. Than the first alien appears and things slam screaming into horror.
- The Greys: What the aliens look like, being grey-skinned, tall and lanky and with large bulbous heads and eyes. Interestingly, in a departure from how they're usually depicted, these greys come in a variety of different sizes, ranging from human-sized to several times larger than humans.
- Hated by All: At first it seems like Brynn is a socially awkward recluse with some boorish neighbors. But by the time she finally runs to town and marches down the main street, it becomes clear by the surprised and disgusted reactions of random passersby that she's specifically known and hated by everyone in town. The specific reason why is ultimately revealed in the final act.
- Hell Is That Noise: The aliens emit bizarre loud noises ranging from clicking to blaring to everything in-between, and each one of them is shown to be terrifying and downright painful for Brynn to hear.
- Hen Pecked Husband: Maude's dad is heavily implied to have long forgiven Brynn for Maude's death and is visibly uncomfortable with how his wife and the other townsfolk treat her. Unfortunately, he's also too weak-willed to go against said domineering wife whenever she harasses Brynn.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- The first alien accidentally causes it's own death when it telekinetically pulls Brynn towards it in a way that causes her arm to fan and hit it in the head with a chunk of model.
- The spider alien fails to escape from the burning car because it's freakishly long limbs get tangled up in the sits and windows.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: When the monkey grey corners Brynn in the bathroom, she tries to fend it off with a mop, only for it to snap the mop head off. Brynn quickly takes advantage of what is now a makeshift spear to pin it through the shoulder to a nearby cupboard, before slamming the door on its head to knock it out.
- Improvised Weapon: Brynn has no real weapons in the house and has to make do with ordinary items which end up working effectively against the aliens, including a boxcutter, a mop handle, several pots of boiling water, and a kitchen lighter.
- Inscrutable Aliens: The aliens are utterly terrifying and incomprehensible, their reasons for what they're doing going totally unexplained.
- JerkAss: Everyone in town is an unpleasant asshole towards Brynn for accidentally killing her friend when she was only 12 years old.
- Jump Cut: When Brynn collapses against a wall, we get a close-up shot at her face as she stares at the dead alien. We then cut to the exact same angle, but several hours later, revealing that she's been sitting there that whole time.
- Kick the Dog: We see the local townsfolk not just snub Brynn but be outright rude. When Brynn waves at a neighbor, he pretends to not even see her. When the mailman arrives to deliver a package, he flings it like a basketball at her mailbox. Someone has also left a big dent in her mailbox, likely from other packages or similar abuse. All of this helps keep our sympathies with Brynn in spite of later revelations.
- Kill It with Fire: Brynn is chased by one of the spider greys and lures it into her car. As it struggles to pull itself free, it breaks the gas tank and Brynn ignites the fuel to incinerate it.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: One interpretation of the ending. It's implied that Brynn's will to survive anything the aliens throw at her causes them to simply give up trying to subjugate her and allow her freedom instead.
- Living Ship: There are implications that the Flying Saucers are alive to some degree, due to the organic way they move and the one that abducts Brynn seeming to converse with the other aliens on board.
- Logo Joke: On the 20th Century Studios and Hulu Original vanity plates in the trailer, there are searchlights from above moving about the logos.
- Mind over Matter: The greys that have the most human-like shape also have telekinetic powers.
- Minimalism: There's only two named characters, almost no dialogue, zero exposition, and little plot beyond Brynn trying to survive against the onslaught.
- Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Taken to it's logical extreme; Brynn remains the one and only person in the entire town not infected by an alien parasite, allowing her to finally have a supportive community life.
- Organic Technology: The parasites that the aliens use to control the townsfolk are clearly some kind of biotech, and the Flying Saucers might be some kind of Living Ship.
- Pajama-Clad Hero: In the first act, Brynn fights off an alien intruder in her nightgown.
- Protect This House: In the second half, Brynn holes up in her house and makes some efforts to fortify it, though her fortifications really have more to do with hiding, such as closing all of her blinds and nailing a blanket over the empty frame of her front door.
- Puppeteer Parasite: Several townspeople are shown to have tentacles squirming under their skin, and at one point Brynn has a similar-looking creature thrust into her mouth. It's quite possible the aliens might just be some kind of suits or carriers for the parasites; Brynn finds a trail of slime coming out of one dead alien's mouth, as if the parasite it was carrying got out and fled after it's host died.
- Reality Has No Subtitles: We hear a lot of the aliens talking to each other, and we also see them using some sort of sign language, but we never get any translation.
- The Reveal: Throughout the first two acts, it becomes increasingly clear that Brynn's status as a pariah in town is linked to the death of her childhood friend, Maude. In the third act, we see what happened.
- Riddle for the Ages: What these aliens want, why they're here and why they choose to spare Brynn is never exactly revealed. What falling-out led to Brynn's killing Maude is similarly hazy.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After the first assault, Brynn makes the sensible decision to just get the hell out of town via bus. Unfortunately for her, a pair of possessed humans are on said bus and attack her, sending her fleeing back to her house.
- Shout-Out:
- While fortifying her home against an invasion, Brynn boils a pot of water on the stove and then flings the scalding water at an invader, a tactic made famous in Straw Dogs (1971).
- The saucers first appear hiding in storm clouds, similar to how Jean Jacket did it.
- Show, Don't Tell: A necessity given the lack of dialogue. Pretty much all the characterization, backstory, and plot is conveyed through visuals and sounds rather than proper exposition.
- Silence Is Golden: There's only a single line of (intelligible) dialogue in the entire film.
- Spiteful Spit: The sheriff's wife silently glares at Brynn and spits at her when she tries to shelter in the police station; Brynn leaves shortly afterwards. These are Maude's parents, so it makes sense.
- Sole Survivor: At the end, Brynn is the only non-possessed human left amongst the town. And depending on how far the aliens' invasion extended, might be the only non-possessed human period!
- These Hands Have Killed: After killing the first alien, Brynn spends the entire remainder of the night just staring at either the corpse or her hands in frozen shock.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Brynn has this expression as she sees an alien ship lurking outside her window and realises what's about to happen.
- Time Skip: After Brynn kills the first alien, she collapses against a wall and stares at it. We then Jump Cut to several hours later, revealing that she's spent all that time doing nothing else.
- Token Good Teammate: Maude's father seems to be the only person in town who isn't a total asshole to Brynn and is clearly unhappy about how she's treated. Sadly, he does nothing to stop it out of apparent fear of being ostracized himself.
- Tractor Beam: As usual for this type of movie, the aliens make plenty use of these. They seem to have several different variations, ranging from the standard tractor beam that can also crush objects to a bright red light that completely immobilises the target.
- Wham Line: When Brynn finally speaks. It's only considered a wham line because it's the only line of (intelligible) dialogue in the entire movie."I'm sorry, Maude."
- Wham Shot: The first alien peaking over Brynn's fridge door, making clear just what kind of movie this really is.
