No One Will Save You
Silence. Thinking beyond. Aliens.
I have a very specific formative memory from seeing SIGNS when I was a kid. I imagine that most folks who saw that movie when it was in its own limelight do as well. You know it, the scene where the alien walks across the screen in the news broadcast and Joaquin loses his shit. Obviously we all understand the whole thing is fictitious, but how close it feels to reality strikes a nerve. I don’t want to speak for everyone, but I will - that scene formed our idea of what an alien was supposed to look like when it was walking on our soil. We know so little about what is “beyond” our world, and we unintentionally rely on these beautiful works of art to build that piece of our imagination. There’s a new movie out called NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU, written and directed by Brian Duffield. It’s an inspiringly fresh take on an extraterrestrial invasion starring one of my favorite new talents, Kaitlyn Dever. Since I saw it a few weeks ago, I can not get it out of my head.
No one hasn’t thought about life beyond our idiotic tax-paying land-owning planet. It is a foolish concept to think we are the only intelligent beings in this universe, galaxy, astral plane. In what is now one of my favorite films of the year, we are able to see what I personally feel most of us would experience when confronted with an alien - total confusion, and fight or flight reactions. The fear of the unknown, be it a skunk in your driveway when you’re walking back inside, or an alien rustling in your living room as you just start to doze off, puts an energetic jump in us. What I truly loved about this film is that it’s 100% civilian approach to a supernatural situation. We only know so much as she knows, and she knows jack. Atop of this, all this alien jargon is happening all the while we are subtly reminded throughout that Brynn is a complex individual with a foggy past of her own. Metaphorically, the aliens in her world that we don’t understand are equivocal to her masked traumatic past that led her to where she is. We are pushed to try and unravel both throughout.
While everyone is comparing this film to the Twilight Zone episode “The Invaders”, Independence Day, Monsters, etc… in a pretty long-shot way, I see some similarities between Lilo and Stitch and No One Will Save You. Mainly from the misunderstanding of each other throughout the majority of the first act. Brian so beautifully displays the human condition here. There is an inherent connection between all life. It’s why we love our pets so much, why zoologists exist, and also why this movie is a cool 90 minutes and not a 10 minute Sundance short. There’s dialogue, but there isn’t for us. As much as we, and Brynn (the character played by Kaitlyn Dever) want to understand the aliens, or run from the danger and fear - it’s important to know why we are running from that fear. Is there a connection to be had that we might be missing?
Bar none, one of my favorite things is a film with a lack of dialogue. There is something so enthralling about carrying a narrative so heavily on physical reactions. I love when corny phrases truly come to life in film - actions speak louder than words. From a viewing standpoint, it really forces you to stay connected to every single moment, every single motion. No One Will Save You does this really remarkable thing of humanizing the extra-terrestrials. Oft in movies it’s easy to assume immediate danger - and a comparable sensation in real life. Again circling back to the fight or flight mentality of it all. We very seldom take the time to dissect if they’re actually a threat at all (Yes, I have seen ARRIVAL and yes it might be my favorite alien film of the aughts).
Aliens have been portrayed in media in so many different ways, for better or worse. A new addition to the canon of this is always welcome in my book. Especially when it’s done in such an every-person type of way. The suspension of belief required to digest this movie, in my opinion, isn’t much at all. I think as humans beings who don’t really know a damn thing beyond our means, we can see a lot of ourselves in this film.