What makes horror scary, more often than not, is the unknown. What's making those floorboards creak? Why are the people in town acting so strange? Who, or what, is casting that shadow outside the window at night?
These are all questions asked by writer/director Brian Duffield's latest horror/thriller No One Will Save You. The problem is, the answers are given up far too easily.
What's No One Will Save You about?
Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) lives by herself in a creaky old country house on the edge of a small town. It's not clear where her family are, but what is clear is that she's a bit of an outcast. Brynn spends her time running errands, writing letters to someone called Maude, and hiding from people she sees in the street. Something is clearly going on with her, but before we have too much time to get invested in that the aliens have, quite literally, landed. From that point on any subtlety goes straight out the window.
If you saw the trailer and are watching this one wishing to be scared, don't get your hopes up. The 93-minute plot mostly plays out like a long game of hide-and-seek, with Brynn running around her house and searching for weapons that might repel her unearthly foe. No matter how good an actor Dever is, though, it's difficult to share her fear. We already know what's coming for her.
No One Will Save You reveals its monsters too early.
It's fairly rare for a horror movie to show its antagonist(s) in full until the end. There's a reason for this. Once you've seen the face of the thing stalking the hero, some of its power is immediately taken away. The fear of seeing something awful is usually stronger than the fear you feel once you've seen it.
This isn't a formula that's followed in No One Will Save You. We see the aliens chasing Brynn early on, and they look pretty much exactly like your stereotypical little green men (these aliens have their own quirks, sure, but it's not enough to make them feel fresh or particularly interesting).
Remember how you only see quick flashes of the creatures in A Quiet Place? Or that brief, shaky footage of the alien in Signs? None of that subtlety is present in No One Will Save You.
Are there any good points?
Frustratingly, there are some hints of the film this might've been. The hook at the heart of the movie – an alien-style home invasion – is a good one, as is the mystery surrounding Brynn's past and the reason for her ostracisation. The direction is solid. Dever, who was excellent in Netflix's mini series Unbelievable, also does a great job of making a fairly threadbare character convincing.
Unfortunately, it's not enough. No One Will Save You feels like an idea that's been awkwardly stretched into a feature length movie. The action is repetitive and unexciting, the plot is thin, and the ending — which shoots for the kind of horror-as-a-metaphor reveal found in films like Run Rabbit Run — is too predictable to be rewarding.
How to watch: No One Will Save You is now streaming on Hulu.
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