When "Temporary Body" is a wonderful award from heaven. Min has 100 days to
change his life.
Brian Duffield delivers an engaging alien invasion thriller with a strong
performance by Kaitlyn Dever, even with a messy third act In the small town of
Mill River, Brynn Adams (Kaitlyn Dever) lives on the edge of town in her
isolated home only occasionally venturing into town as she's not welcome due
to an incident involving her former best friend Maude Collins. During the
night, Brynn is awoken by strange noises from in her home that soon prove to
be unearthly in nature and a prelude of a bigger nightmare to come. No One
Will Save You is the sophomore feature of Brian Duffield following his 2020
debut Spontaneous. The script was acquired by 20th Century Fox in a
competitive bidding war and featured up and coming actress Kaitlyn Dever
attached as the lead who'd earned strong acclaim in miniseries such as
Unbelievable and Dopesick as well as the 2019 film Booksmart. Largely shot
under the radar on a modest budget (roughly $23 million), the movie now makes
a rather lowkey debut on Hulu and while it is overall good, I'll admit I did
find myself less engaged in the third act.
One of the major defining features of No One Will Save You is that with
the exception of one line, the film has no spoken dialogue and this is a
purely visual film in terms of creating story and characterization. Kaitlyn
Dever has proven herself time and time again as a reliable actress and that's
no less true here as she takes what's essentially a one woman show for much of
the time and must create a character purely through facial expressions and
pantomime and it really works as you get an idea for her character and the
situation in her town without a word being spoken. Once the aliens show up,
the movie puts its minimalist setting to good use and despite the aliens being
somewhat conventional in nature, Duffield finds unique ways of using them (and
to a degree justifying their appearance) and we get some really memorable
sequences of Brynn either hiding from the aliens or being chased by them. I do
have some misgivings about the film especially in how it maybe stretches
itself a little much in its minimalist dialogue with a scene towards the
middle of the film where Brynn doesn't file a police report (which they try to
justify to mixed results in my opinion).
The movie also has a third act that tries to tie back to the incident with
Brynn's friend Maude and while I think it is better handled than how Signs
handled similar traumatic incidents in its take on aliens, it didn't quite hit
the mark for me especially with the rather strange note the movie ends on.
It's honestly a shame this movie's been released on Hulu instead of in
theaters, because I can see this being exactly the kind of low budget high
concept genre film that's begging to be experienced with a full auditorium
that would see it perform in the company of films such as Super 8 and A Quiet
Place. While I have my personal misgivings about the end result, I applaud
Duffield for trying to do something out of convention with the alien sci-fi
genre and Dever continues to show what a strong actress she is. That alone
makes it worth a viewing in my opinion.
