Aliens have been in our movies ever since Georges Méliès’s 1902 silent epic “A Trip to the Moon.” Since then, we’ve been gifted 1951’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” 1953’s “War of the Worlds,” 1956’s “Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers,” and that’s just the ‘50s. Mankind has been fascinated with extraterrestrial life for centuries, but these last two centuries really kicked off the ET craze.
CineDump Rating: ★★½
It all started in June of 1947 when pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine unidentified flying objects while flying past Mt. Rainier. The rest, including the infamous Roswell Incident, is history.
Steven Spielberg portrayed aliens three times in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T. The Extraterrestrial,” and his updated version of “War of the Worlds.” Ridley Scott gave us a more animalistic creature with his “Alien” franchise.
With Brian Duffield’s sophomore directorial “No One Will Save You,” he took the classic look of the alien: the short, bug-eyed, grey alien and melded them with the home invasion genre. A clever twist is that 98% of the film has no dialogue. Sure, it sounds a bit tedious, but with Duffield’s direction, he makes it work without it being annoying or tedious.
The lead, played by Kaitlyn Dever, owns a massive house by herself, and the rest of the town seems to, for some reason, hate her. As if her life couldn’t be worse...aliens. The CGI is borderline pristine. The creeping, stalking alien “greys” are nothing short of terrifying.
It’s the final act of the film that throws a loop so hard, that I just can’t justify a high rating. Giving away that twist would be a spoiler, but if you watch this Hulu Original, just be prepared for a whack in the face with an ending that’s just too wild and too nonsensical to appreciate.
It’s not a bad film by any means. It’s actually quite awesome and suspenseful. But some films end so bizarrely that it’s hard to justify the hard work put into it. Check it out, just be prepared for a weird, underwhelming ending.
Jacob Scheer