Scream Stream 2023: No One Will Save You

Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) is a young woman still living in her childhood hometown in an isolated country house. She is somewhat of a hermit and mourns the loss of her best friend Maude, by writing letters to her as if she were still alive.  She builds a model of the town to cope with the isolation that seems to be inflicted on her by the town’s people due to some event that happened when she was twelve involving Maude. No one acknowledges her, and she dreams of having personal contact with people.  One night, she is awakened by a noise and thinking it is an animal in her garbage cans, she gets out of bed, and quickly learns that it is not any type of earthly creature, but an alien invasion.  The rest of the movie is her trying to escape the different kinds of aliens.  There are smaller ones that are really aggressive, huge ones with very long limbs that are fast, strong and cunning, and what appear to be the leaders, who are human sized and have telekinetic abilities that also produce (literally cough up like a hairball) a small parasite that takes over the hosts body.  As the story progresses, we learn Brynn’s dark secret and what has caused her life to be so lonely.  Can she escape the fate of the rest of the townsfolk, or will she succumb and become an alien pawn? Watch and find out!

I have to say, I am conflicted about this film and am not sure if I liked it or not.  The first thing to note is that this film has no dialogue (drawing a sort of reverse-parallel with the Twilight Zone episode The Invaders).  There are a couple words spoken and we hear the lyrics from songs, but for the most part no one speaks in this movie, which I found really interesting.  Without dialogue, the way we are given expositional information is cleverly done and felt quite natural, but if you aren’t paying close attention, it is easy to miss something that might add to the movie’s emotional impact.  Also, without dialogue, I found it harder to connect with Brynn and lessened the empathy I might have felt for her as we discover what her secret is. You do like Brynn, she has a kind and playful attitude and even without speaking a word, you can feel how much she misses being around people, but it did make me wonder why she would remain in this small town where everyone seems to hate her. Kaitlyn does a wonderful job creating this vulnerable character who also has an inner strength and so much remorse in her heart.  The technical aspects of the movie seemed to be hit and miss for me as well.  Most of the special effects are really good, but nothing we haven’t already seen in a thousand different sci-fi films.  There are times I felt that the movement of the aliens seemed a bit off and not quite realistic, but this was a minor issue.  The story is well conceived and well executed throughout the film.  The ending I found the most fascinating, and even not understanding what the aliens are saying, you get what their judgement of Brynn is and their decision about her fate.

The film has been getting quite a lot of buzz and was the most streamed film across all platforms directly after its release. Reviews have also been mainly favorable. Did I enjoy the film? Yes.  So why am I conflicted?  I am not sure myself; it is a well-conceived and executed film with a clever storytelling technique and a strong female lead, but I guess possibly, without dialogue, I just didn’t connect to Brynn as much as I wanted to.  There was just something keeping me from really caring about whether or not she survived.  This could be the mood I was in when I watched it, I may have to give it a second viewing.