“No One Will Save You” is here. And you probably have some questions.
The sci-fi thriller, now streaming on Hulu, stars Kaitlyn Dever as a young woman who lives apart from society and is forced to defend herself against an otherworldly presence. If you’ve ever been spooked by alien abduction documentaries or UFO sightings, then this movie, written and directed by Brian Duffield, will keep you up for days. It mixes extraterrestrial mythology with home invasion terror and is both emotionally and viscerally satisfying.
TheWrap recently probed Duffield’s thoughts on a few key points about the film’s antagonists and ending.
Warning: Major spoilers ahead from “No One Will Save You”
Yes, the aliens are all working together
“No One Will Save You” throws a lot at viewers. There are aliens of all shapes and sizes (although vaguely related): clones, little creatures that rest in your throat and control you, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”-style. We had to ask: Are they all working together?
“It’s one party. I think we talked a lot about [how] it’s a ship going to the new world and they’re coming in like, ‘This place is great and we’ll make your lives better.’ It’s not necessarily the case, but that was something we talked about. They don’t think they’re a–holes,” Duffield explained. “Sometimes they’re mad at how things are going, but I think they think that they are doing God’s will.”
Circling back to the idea that they are all connected he said that the aliens are “one planet.”
“They’re all working together and they’re all subspecies of the same thing. I know all their roles on their home base and all that stuff, not that we would ever see it,” Duffield said. “I’m not saying it’s the same as having cops have dogs, but I like the idea of you see three or four subspecies in the movie. They’re all on the same boat.”
The alien design added to the “reality” of the movie
One of the more interesting aspects of the movie — and one that we pressed Duffield about — was the fact that the main alien design is basically the alien emoji on your phone – the grey extraterrestrial with the big eyes and triangular head. This design has certainly been used before, first popularized in the Christopher Walken based-on-a-true-story “Communion,” but also trotted out in film and TV projects like “Fire in the Sky” and, of course, “The X-Files.”
For Duffield, it added to the reality of the movie and its sense of history.
“Allegedly in the ’40s, it crashed on Roswell and people found it. I think that is such an exciting idea that just has gotten so deeply ingrained in Americana that I think, yes, it’s become the keychain and the emoji, but it’s also really one of the defining creature designs of all time,” Duffield said. “It’s the one that came out of ‘reality’ and it just felt like, to me, it was really underserved. There’s so many alien movies.”
Duffield then deployed an expert analogy: “The example I said to the studio, it’s like if there was 10 dinosaur movies a year and none of them had a T-Rex. At some point, give me a f–king T-Rex guys. I’m dying to see the T-Rex. There’s so many cool dinosaurs, and it’s not a knock on any of the other dinosaurs, but at some point, I feel like it’s been decades since someone gave me a T-Rex and I was like, ‘I want to see a gray.’ And I just really wanted it.”
Part of this desire, of course, was practical. “I wanted to have a face that Kaitlyn could act opposite because the more buggy you get — and I love ‘District 9′ — but Wikus is talking so much in that movie and then you have the subtitled alien, and so you can get all that banter,” Duffield said. “I was like, ‘That’s not going to happen in this movie.’ She’s got to have a lot of face-to-face time with these guys.”
The widely popularized alien design also served as shorthand with an audience; once they see that alien they completely compute what is going on. “Knowing that Kaitlyn was going to see an alien five minutes in and know it was an alien and that the audience needed to see a glimpse of an alien and know it was an alien. It was just like, ‘Okay, let’s start off from everyone’s on the same page. They see a glimpse of this guy and they’re like, alien. I know it. I’m good.’”
Duffield said that after establishing that, you could “start adding things to it” and “pulling things from it.” “You could start adding those different subspecies, all those different things, but you kind of have gotten everyone on the same page immediately where it’s not a mutant or something. It’s like it’s not a burglar,” Duffield said. “It’s like, that’s an alien and I know where I’m at and now I’m along for the ride.”
What about that last shot?
Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to ask Duffield about the final shot in the movie, but it’s certainly going to be one that is talked about long after you stream “No One Will Save You.”
In the finale seen we see Dever dancing along with folks who are apparently overtaken with the alien body snatcher parasite. There’s upbeat music, perhaps implying that the invasion is over, but as the camera pans up, UFOS hover above Earth.
So what does that mean?
Well, our understanding is that Dever’s character, having been abducted (and the aliens seeing the kind of trauma that has shaped her life), has essentially agreed to live under the invaders’ rule. As a young child she accidentally killed her friend and the town made her an outcast. She lives outside of the town in a house with her mother (now deceased). When she goes in for help, she gets spit on by her friend’s parents. Humanity has totally cast her aside. When the aliens present another alternative, one in which she can actually be happy and accepted, she takes it. She doesn’t need mankind. She can make her own life now, amidst the star men.
“No One Will Save You” is streaming on Hulu now.
