No One Will Save You - Review Thread

I just recently started making my way through The X-Files for the very first time, and that show treats the idea of alien abduction with a real level of menace, something I've always thought that more horror movies worth their salt should try to do, but only few seem to have done successfully. Well, No One Can Save You -- a new direct-to-Hulu film produced by 20th Century Studios -- can be added to that list. Because not only does it successfully treat the idea of alien visitors with a palpable sense of horror, it does so in a very interesting and unexpected way. There's no way of properly talking about this movie without stating what that unique way is: save for MAYBE two or three words, No One Can Save You is a completely dialogue-free movie. Now, you could say the Quiet Place movies beat this to the punch, but even those movies have sequences where the characters manage to speak to each other. No One Can Save You, by comparison, has one dream-like sequence where the main character utters maybe three words, but that's it. The rest of the time, the film demands that star Kaitlyn Dever (who is VERY good in this), use her facial expressions and physicality to sell her character's plight, and it definitely works because she communicates so much with so very little. But it's not just because of her. Writer/director Brian Duffield keeps the suspense and dread high through a number of well-staged setpieces that take good advantage of the mostly-single location of a two-story house out in the country. And both his direction and Dever's performance work in tandem to keep us invested throughout. But getting back to the no-dialogue thing for a minute: the key there is that it all feels organic and never like a gimmick. Even on the few occasions Dever's Brynn finds herself around other people, the lack of exchanged words feels believable in the contexts presented, namely the backstory the script ultimately gives Brynn. No One Will Save You is essentially a modern-day silent film, one that relies on visual language to tell its narrative and fortunately, it has a capable storyteller to do so. The only thing that might hamper it somewhat ironically may be the look of the aliens themselves, which is a bit too formulaic, but perhaps that's appropriate in a film built around simplicity. Regardless, No One Can Save You is a thrilling piece of genre entertainment, and one that shows there are still creative ways to approach these. What a shame, too, that it was straight-to-streaming and not a theatrical release.