Brian Duffield’s sci-fi horror No One Will Save You has seen a pretty good reception from viewers despite being hit with the double whammy of a streaming release and lack of advertising on its parent sites.
The movie sees a reclusive young woman (Kaitlyn Dever) fending off alien invaders in her isolated home. It’s undoubtedly made itself stand out. Duffield made one of the most striking romance movies of recent years with the horrors of Spontaneous, and his approach to No One Will Save You is similarly refreshing. The movie features next to no dialogue, and its alien invaders are a fascinating mixture of traditional design and bizarre reimaginings.
Variety spoke with Duffield about those particular choices, and he revealed exactly what went into each decision.
No One Will Save You Dialogue and Alien Choices
Duffield states that having limited dialogue was not a gimmick or screenplay challenge, but rather a natural cause of the story as it began to take shape. Duffield even states it felt very similar to making a dialogue-heavy movie like Spontaneous.
“I had this character that I knew was a recluse,” Duffield said. “It’s not a monologuing movie, so it stemmed out of that. Also, with her character being alone, she needs to not have power in her house so that she doesn’t have access to information. For me, that’s what was scary.
But how to make the story connect with no spoken dialogue?
“There was a lot of discussion about, ‘What is her character thinking?’ and ‘How can we have the audience catch up about why she’s not running into town screaming that the world is ending?’” was Duffield’s response. “She thinks, ‘I have to plead my case,’ and it doesn’t go well. I think the audience catches up pretty quickly to it. I knew there would be even less dialogue than I had planned originally. That would be the scariest and worst thing to have happened in that situation: She’s alone, and people don’t want to help her. It’s an unusual situation for an alien invasion movie.”
When it comes to the aliens, which take the traditional shape of the classic Grey type. Duffield was very keen on using that design.
“I felt like I was missing this movie monster that I loved and no one was giving it to me. I think most of filmmaking is making the movie that you want to see that no one else is making. I wanted to see this monster back on my screen.”
One of the surprising things about No One Will Save You is how quickly the aliens are revealed, and Duffield had good reason to show his extraterrestrial hand early.
“It’s the anti-Hitchcock, anti-‘Jaws’ kind of thing,” Duffield said of the choice, “It’s hopefully making people go, ‘There’s a reason why we’re seeing so much so early.’ By the end of the first act, you quickly understand that there’s a really interesting opportunity to do a story where these aliens have come from light years away. They’re here now, they’ve avoided all human detection, but now they don’t need to be cheeky — just walking into her house is the most boring part of their day.”
No One Will Save You is currently streaming on Hulu.
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