Welcome to the beginning of 31 Days of Frights, where I’ll be watching a scary movie every day for the month of October! Our first selection is the Hulu original No One Will Save You!
I remember seeing ads for this movie last year, and it was the bed scene specifically that creeped me out. It’s the perfect blend of extraterrestrial horror and grounded human unease. Which is an excellent summation of the movie as a whole!
In this film, we follow Brynn, an isolated young woman shunned by her small town. When terror strikes, Brynn is forced to confront her attackers on her own – after all, no one else will save her.
In a creative twist, No One Will Save You is almost entirely dialogue-free, with only five spoken words delivered in a single scene. This technique lends to the tense terror of Brynn’s situation, and it keeps the movie from spoon-feeding information to the viewer.
(Although there were some heavyhanded parts in the exposition. If Brynn is sitting next to a grave that says “Loving mother,” you don’t need to add “to Brynn.” Viewers can figure that out on their own. And if Brynn writes long, familiar letters to someone named Maude, you don’t need to write “Brynn and Maude, BFFs” on a tacked-up picture of two young girls. Just cut off the last word!)
With creepy angles of someone lowering themselves in front of Brynn’s house, the sudden flash of every light turning on, and the creaking sound of an open door and footsteps, No One Will Save You wastes little time jumping into a relatably terrifying scenario of a supernatural home invasion. Every beat is delivered with surgically unsettling precision, from the slow reveal of the alien’s form to that first glimpse of its oily black eyes over the fridge door.
As scary as this part was, I had to turn up the brightness on my laptop to see it. I’m not saying this movie has to have the LOTR “Frodo in the Tower of Cirith Ungol” lighting, but what’s the point of a decent horror scene if you can’t tell what’s going on?
The plot is given a respite from its toe-curling tension with more nerve-racking visuals – crop circles, silent panic attacks, and scenes with busses and nails and chase scenes too close for comfort!
I’ll hide the rest of my review in a spoiler tag, because there’s too much to talk about freely. To end here: Brynn makes for a strong “first and final girl” and that title becomes more relevant the more you look at it!
*spoilers below*
It was refreshing to have a horror MC just buy a bus ticket and try to get the hell out of town. That’s not a common tactic! Shame that it didn’t work out for Brynn, but good try!
Frick me, the scene where Brynn loses her pan to the green traction beam, and the alien realizes it and starts advancing… that was a big “back the hell away from the laptop” moment. It’s so neat how all of the aliens Brynn faced, from the small to the freakishly large, had their own distinct personalities.
By the end of the movie, you’re even feeling for some of the aliens. The way that big one looked up at the sky when it flies away, oof. And the way it trips over its own spider legs climbing down the roof! Fantastic levity!
When I started this movie, I only remembered the bed scene, but at the part where Brynn is trapped in the red traction ray, that shot back into my mind like a model church steeple!
The more I looked into this movie after finishing it, the more parallels I understood. I completely missed how the humans being possessed by the aliens, hands raised, mimicked Maude’s position when she died, or the tie between Brynn accidentally killing the first alien the way she accidentally killed Maude!
I also love the theory – very likely more than a theory – that the spores in the aliens’ mouths are the true invaders, and they possessed the gray aliens first. And that ending, with the aliens abducting Brynn and scanning through her memories – it was so neat, and narratively satisfying, for them to be so impressed with her! She has a pretty high kill count, after all! I loved the Reddit comment about how they probably think she’s “Earth’s greatest warrior!”
And then the finale!. Brynn is now living in a town much like her models – everyone is possessed and subservient to her – and she’s finally happy! She’s accepted and appreciated and no longer isolated! It’s an ending just as twisted and satisfying as she deserves!
No One Will Save You is a movie about far more than it seems. Yes, the title refers to Brynn and her necessary effort to save herself, but with that ending… now it applies to the town, too! No one’s coming to save them, especially not Brynn!
