Highlights
- Hulu distributed a new horror alien abduction movie that generated conversation due to its high quality and head-scratching ending.
- No One Will Save You, similar to A Quiet Place, features minimal dialogue and aliens, but its ending leaves viewers with more questions.
- The movie explores themes of trauma, grief, and forgiveness, with Brynn's past and the aliens' actions serving as allegories for these concepts.
One of the great things about modern streaming services is that direct-to-TV movies have a higher quality to them than they did in the '90s. Hulu distributed a new horror alien abduction movie that made people talk. It's not universally loved by audiences, especially with the head-scratch of an ending, but it certainly became the topic of conversation when people returned to work.
As much as A Quiet Place had people talking, they didn't discuss it and its ending as much as Brian Duffield's No One Will Save You. There are a few similarities between the two, for sure. They both deal with minimal dialogue and aliens. However, John Krasinski's action horror film had a straightforward ending whereas Brian Duffield left people asking, "Huh?"
No One Will Save You Review
No One Will Save You may fall back on alien invasion tropes, but its clever narrative device slightly elevates it above similar genre fare.
What Happens in No One Will Save You?
As alien abduction movies go, this one starts off fairly traditional. A person lives in a home and notices a couple of weird things as they go about their day, and then the very next night, an unusual-looking creature visits them in their home. Brynn, played by Kaitlyn Dever from Booksmart and Justified, lives alone in a big house in the country. The movie doesn't divulge much about her past except for a few little breadcrumbs here and there. She writes a letter to a friend named Maude that looks like a normal letter until the end of it when Brynn apologizes. For what? They don't tell you yet.
Before Brynn goes into town, she notices a little circle of dead grass in her front yard. That would be the weird instance previously mentioned. When she makes it into town, the audience realizes something is afoot as nobody talks to Brynn. They don't even so much as smile in her direction. However, they definitely stare at her as she passes by. Things start to become clear when Brynn sees a couple across a parking lot from her, and she ducks behind a car. Who is the couple? Besides knowing one of them is a cop, it's unknown, but things start to fall into place. What's important to note is that Brynn hasn't spoken a single word up to this point. Not even so much as a whisper to herself.
That night, when Brynn goes to sleep, she's awoken by a sudden noise that she thinks is a raccoon. If only it were that simple, Brynn. When she heads downstairs, she notices her front door is wide open and somebody or something is walking around in her living room. Brynn can't see the alien clearly, but it's obviously admiring a model of her home and the town she crafted. It's when Brynn tries to step backward and make her way back to her room, which causes her wooden floor to creak and echo throughout the house, that a game of hide and seek ensues.
Brynn successfully evades the alien a few times until she gets downstairs and it corners her in the kitchen. This is where Brynn, along with the audience, that this alien is telekinetic as it throws her around the living room. It's by sheer luck that Brynn ends up impaling the alien's head, which kills it. As the story progresses, the audience learns more and more about Brynn and her friend Maude. When Brynn goes into town the next day seeking help, she runs into the very couple she hid from and takes a loogie to the face.
On the way home, Brynn discovers this alien visitor wasn't a one-off, and there's an entire fleet of them. Better yet, they're controlling other townsfolk with spiny little creatures in their throats, which Brynn has placed in her throat at one point. But what is the movie actually about?
How Does No One Will Save You End?
Under the plot of aliens chasing Brynn and trying to control her, No One Will Save You is about trauma, grief, and overcoming that pain. It might be tangentially about the millennial generation and the overwhelming amount of trauma they endured in their formative years if one reads into it that way. After all, millennials lived through multiple wars, terrorist attacks in their backyard, numerous drug crises, and a financial crisis or two. Not only does Brynn struggle with the trauma and grief of killing her friend, but she deals with all of it while the world around her is burning to the ground. She's the embodiment of the "This is fine" meme, which in turn is the millennial generation in a nutshell.
Aliens abduct and enslave the entire town while they chase Brynn through the woods. Eventually, the aliens get a hold of the heroine and bring her aboard a ship. They look into her memories and discover the root cause of Brynn's trauma. She killed her friend Maude in the middle of a heated argument by slamming a rock against her head and lived as a pariah ever since. In an unexpected turn of events, the aliens let her go as if deciding she underwent enough trauma for a lifetime, so they won't enslave her.
The final scene shows Brynn interacting and dancing with the very same townsfolk who shunned her earlier in the film. As the camera pulls back, it reveals alien ships flying around, abducting other humans and enslaving them. While it's an extremely apocalyptic ending, it's also a unique twist not otherwise seen in other alien abduction movies. In a way, it becomes an allegory about forgiveness.
Brynn, who killed her best friend by accident as a child, lived as an outcast because an entire town of humans only ever saw her as a murderer. Meanwhile, these entities from another planet almost immediately forgive her for killing one of their own. They saw the pain and suffering she underwent and determined that was enough. They could forgive her and allow her to integrate into their new society.