No One Will Save You

  Blender Dumbass
September 30, 2023

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https://blenderdumbass.org/articles/_500_billion_industry_that_causes_not_only_the_loss_of_freedom_but_also_increases_anxiety : 👁 1
https://blenderdumbass.org/reviews/broken_wings___2002___is_satisfyingly_depressing : 👁 1
https://blenderdumbass.org/reviews?page=10 : 👁 1

It's interesting sometimes what different artists do with the same material when this material is not bound by copyright. Good filmmakers like Kenneth Branagh can make wonderful adaptation of things like plays by Shakespeare into insane epics. Bad filmmakers like Rhys Frake-Waterfield can make awful twists on beloved characters, like the horror film Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.

But then there is a type of a character that is strangely not copyrighted for some reason despite being very popular. The type of character that appeared in a lot of movies. It was in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind - wondrous epic of enormous proportion and larger than life heart. It was in Paul - a comedy about people learning how amazing it is to be rude sometimes from it. And it is now in No One Will Save You - a truly breathtaking horror film.

Of course I'm talking about the Grey Alien. A humanoid type thing with big black eyes that has a flying saucer that shoots beams of light that can pick up people. There are a lot of stories about those Grey aliens. Those stories have a lot of overlaps. And maybe, in some weird way, the Greys actually exist. And they actually have a flying saucer with a beam of light that can pick up people. Who knows?

I've seen a lot of movies with Greys. I'm a Grey Alien fan if you will. If I hear that there is a movie based on the Grey Aliens lore. I'm watching it. I saw some very bad films on that type of Alien. I saw some good ones. I saw some that might not be considered movies about Greys, but kind of are about them. Like, for example M. Night Shyamalan's Signs where they are not Grey but rather Green-ish instead. I also watched way too many documentaries about Greys. Even though they were very dumb at times. I guess I saw them as a kind of horror film substitutes. Watching people argue that Greys exist make you imagine them behind your door, or outside of your window. And it's a very good thrill that I enjoy quite a lot.

I also tried writing about Greys a couple of times. I was trying to develop this movie called Sinking In The Fire which was referenced in my book Sheiny The Hacker as the movie that Sheiny ends up writing and directing. And I made a music video with a Grey alien, but is sucks.

So you could say that I am a kind of expert on the subject, so to speak. And I was obviously excited to see a yet another installment to my favorite franchise.

If you saw Close Encounters Of The Third Kind you can probably recall a sequence towards the beginning of the movie where the aliens abduct the little boy. In the Spielberg's version he had to include the wondrous nature of the boy actually inviting the aliens into the house. While the mother is trying to protect herself and him as much as she can. For her it's total horror. For him it's total excitement. Which makes the movie very deep.

The writer / director of No One Will Save You Brian Duffield perhaps thought about that one scene and what would it be like if there was no boy. If the woman was alone and the whole movie was her trying to not get abducted by aliens. And so he made this movie.

The directing in the movie is fantastic. The tension works wonderfully. The scares are effective. I was so energized by this film all throughout. Every new thrill was so good I was literally bursting with amazement of how good everything was.

Also the director understands the term - "Show, don't tell" - very well. I mean. Ah...

You know how sometimes an artist might limit himself with what is available to him to make something unique? To force creativity? Like when Lars Von Trier did a movie without sets. And so the characters and the drama had to be on another level, so the audience wouldn't mind a movie with no sets. Or like when a writer might reveal the ending immediately, just to invent interesting ways to get to that ending, so the movie would still work. So this movie has a limitation that Brian Duffield set on himself.

The limitation is: There are no dialogues. Literally. The movie has like 2 lines of spoken words. And it's in a very emotional scene. And it's spoken only by one character. The movie is just a masterclass at limitation.

For example the movie makes you believe multiple times that the main character will start talking on a phone. And every time there is some clever way to make her not actually talk on the phone. And apart from the phone there are other moments where she almost talks to somebody, but then in a clever way, the conversation is avoided.

The beginning and the end of the film ( together with how the main character looks ) reminds me a lot of Edgar Wright's movie Last Night In Soho. Which if you know even a little bit about Edgar Wright, is a bit of a horror musical. It is scary and tense, but it just likes to dance a little with a good song. Like in Last Night in Soho the main character of this movie makes her own clothing. And there is one instance in this movie where Brian Duffield thought that it's a good idea to do Micky Mousing ( a scene where she hammers nails ). Also funny how Kaitlyn Dever ( the actress that played the main character in this movie ) looks like a twin of Thomasin McKenzie ( who played the main character in Last Night In Soho ). I can tell you almost with 100% certainty, Brian Duffield is a very big fan of Edgar Wright.

Speaking of which. The movie is very pretty to look at, mostly because of the absolute masterful use of an Anamorphic Lens. Which is, by the way, probably the only type of lens that Edgar Wright uses. But let's not talk about it too much, shall we. Okay... I didn't know the name of the director before starting to watch this movie. And towards the end, I was starting to believe that it might be a new Edgar Wright movie. Though Close Encounters Of The Third Kind also used the anamorphic lens. So maybe it could be a reference to that. And not an explicit Edgar Wright reference.

Spoiler

To be honest with you, I'm still confused about the ending of this movie. It was weird and confusing. Thought for some reason it felt like the director is trying to whimsy everything a bit. Like if he was done with making a horror film and for one shot he wants to make a classic Spielbergian alien story. To then cut to a an Edgar Wright musical. I was so confused. But it worked somehow.

If you like either aliens, horror or Edgar Wright, I think it will be a good movie for you. If you are Steven Spielberg ( which would be very cool if he visited this website ), I don't know how should it feel to see this movie. On one end it feel like a sequel to Close Encounters. But then what the hell?

Happy Hacking!!!


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