Director: Brian Duffield
Stars: Kaitlyn Dever, Lauren L. Murray, Dari Lynn Griffin
It seems like only yesterday that our most good-natured perennial cineaste Guillermo del Toro was expounding the virtues of No One Will Save You on Twitter (that’s Twitter, Elon; see how you like deadnaming). And if it seems that way, it’s because it was yesterday. At the time of writing, anyway. I had assumed del Toro had the access and opportunity to see an advanced screening of something special coming our way in the months to come. Of course, he just watched it online like the rest of us. This is the way these things arrive now. Spilled out into the algorithm to sink or swim.
Unceremoniously unloaded onto Disney+ in time for the first days of autumn, then, No One Will Save You is a slice of modern sci-fi horror with a difference. Difference being that barely a word is uttered over its 93 minutes.
Kaitlyn Dever (Short Term 12, Booksmart) is Brynn Adams, a young and independent seamstress living in a fairy tale house in the woods on the outskirts of rural American suburbia. Her idyllic if isolated existence has a 1950s feel to it, not just in the dress and technology evidenced (aside from the cars and an anachronistic flat screen TV), but in certain key images conjured.
Having spotted a strange discolouration in her lawn that morning, Brynn is awoken in the dead of night by the houselights playing havoc and the sound of something stirring downstairs. No sooner has she gathered her wits, the house comes under attack from the grey aliens from The X-Files. This extra-terrestrial menace feels attuned to both Jordan Peele’s alien smash Nope from last year, the reemergence of UFO conspiracies in the news currently, and – unavoidably – the unearthly menaces that plague the Quiet Place movies; to which NOWSY feels directly indebted. Whatever his inspirations, director Brian Duffield seems to be riding the wave of a cultural moment, here. Aliens are back, baby.
The false-promises of ’50s domesticity seem rife in the margins of Duffield’s movie (the first great era of UFO paranoia, let us not forget). Chiefly it presents in Brynn’s solitude. While seemingly a single woman, the early images of her pouring herself a glass of wine before sundown ring with plenty of prior investigations into domestic ennui. Later, when under attack, Brynn becomes literally imprisoned by her own refrigerator; a further metaphor for the confinement discovered in a lifestyle based on assumptions of consumer bliss. Brynn’s favourite time of day is when the mailman comes to bring her her deliveries (damn, I felt seen then).
The film’s title becomes less of a generic threat once new revelations about the aliens’ purpose are revealed to us, coupled with suggestions that Brynn herself is reviled by the local community, and that her isolation may actually be exile. Here NOWSY starts playing heavy with metaphors of guilt and grief, as it seems Brynn herself will need to let go of the past in order to move forward and survive. Still, Duffield doesn’t lose sight of the need for more immediate thrills. NOWSY starts borrowing heavily from Body Snatchers territory to increase the variety of its threats, while the mid-portion of the film reduces down to a lean and spirited game of hide and seek right out of the slasher movie playbook.
Dever is wonderfully game throughout, expressive and physically committed to the part. Duffield, for his part, shows great love for his chosen genre, employing all sorts of tricks and staples, from the UFO tractor beam to the evil double routine. If it makes NOWSY a little patchwork, Joseph Trapanese’s willowy score and Gabriel Flemming’s editing are on hand to sew it all together.
Inevitably, perhaps, modes of communication become a recurring theme. Divining the aliens’ intent is an impossible task of reading the contortions of their bodies that seem to spell out words in an unknown dialect. Brynn herself seems preoccupied with an even more sadly futile method of expression, writing letters to the dead in an effort to expunge or exorcise her own remorse. Brynn’s isolation means that the conceit of a ‘silent’ sci-fi horror movie isn’t as thinly stretched as one might assume; she really has no one to talk to. By extension, this is a survival story of self-reliance and also – ultimately – self-forgiveness achieved through acts of sheer will.
The ending is fanciful, silly and likely a bit too sentimental for some tastes, yet it also smacks of dark compromise, and we’re left to wonder if Brynn has really ‘won’ or not. This plays into the broader sense of fairy tale mechanics in the brio of Duffield’s screenplay. Ultimately, this would have played gangbusters in a captivated cinema – the way A Quiet Place did – so its something of a mystery as to why studios continue to lose faith in their nurtured projects. If NOWSY is to excel it will be, ironically, on word of mouth.
The Lost Highway Hotel 