‘No One Will Save You’s non-talkative, but anxiously exciting sci-fi ways are entertaining and swift

Thoughts of having a home invasion while you’re alone are anxiety-inducing enough. Writer/director Brian Duffield adds a cherry on top – explicitly having classic grey space invaders voraciously breaking down every door and sense of security to abduct you. Ah, but imagine the slight wrinkle that there is no one to call. In that simple premise, Duffield’s feature lives up to every sense of the title, No One Will Save You. Once it gets going, it’s relentless and enjoyingly exhaustive in how it tries to fluster its main character. These aren’t precisely the E.T.-like travelers looking for friendship and a ride home.

Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) lives a quiet life of solitude. She enjoys old 1950s music and making alterations to dresses. On the outside, everything looks okay until things are shown to us visually. Brynn’s mother and sister have passed away, and she spends a lot of time visiting their graves. That’s because it doesn’t feel as though the cozy time she lives within is not welcoming of her. Bryann waves to a neighbor, and he gives her a dirty look. She ducks at the site of the sheriff and his wife and writes letters to what could be inferred as a childhood friend (there’s a childhood picture shown). There’s very little dialogue present in No One Will Save You, but Dever expresses longing or being encased in her place of grief through facial expressions and certain noises.

It doesn’t feel as out of place as you think because Dever invests in this role. One quiet night is soon interrupted by a wide-open front door and the sound of pitter-patter across her wooden floors. The big-eyed extra terrestrials exert a plethora, ranging from contorting their bodies to a range of telekinetic powers. Duffield makes use of the house in many ways an intrusion thriller would be. Tense moments happen while Brynn hides under the bed or even tries to escape outside. The only bits of audio you hear are the aliens speaking in their language, coupled with the exasperation Brynn is feeling just trying to survive.

20th Century Studios

Given their intelligence, something is unnerving about listening and viewing the aliens’ communication methods and not understanding what is coming next. This is even with being familiar with some of the physicality the audience will be used to in this intergalactic cat-and-mouse game. This isn’t Brynn’s only problem, as the aliens have taken over many townspeople, rendering any possible ally useless. It’s not that she had one before (even though there is a moment where Duffield could have elected to break the no-dialogue method).

But No One Will Save You commits to its premise wholeheartedly. As much as Brynn is battling classic flying saucers with beams that could paralyze her movement, the battle is just as much internal. A sequence towards the end of the film fully unveils what that means in terms of a tragic story, making this young woman a pariah and making a trip to the police station such a moment of extreme humiliation. You’ll want at least a tiny morsel of Brynn exerting some self-explanation or assuredness, but she sinks into a pit of despair.

Some men (or things) want to watch the world burn. For Brynn, this will make life much harder (if it wasn’t challenging enough). If No One Will Save You had been longer, the stage would have thinned out. However, the feature is just the right length for jolts and character development to keep you locked in past the bleeps and bloops.