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Tuesday, October 3, 2023

NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU (2023)

Unheralded rather than over-hyped, this chamber-sized alien horror pic from writer/director Brian Duffield, a word-of-mouth hit for HULU, delivers on its title, but comes up short in the chiller department.  It’s as if he studied the field too carefully, getting every note right yet missing the tune.  There’s creepy, there’s crawly, but only one real scare in the pic.  Duffield sets up a neat technical challenge for himself, squelching almost all dialogue in favor of music cues & sound design, in what amounts to a near one-hander for Kaitlun Dever, alone in her big ol’ isolated house, running some sort of dressmaking shop in a cluttered space filled with homey dollhouses and a few past secrets she nurtures involving her late mother and a former BFF.  Then came the aliens; setting up a multi-stage battle to subdue & subsume her mind & body.  The first half, working more by suggestion (the filmmakers’) and imagination (yours) is best, with lots of references from Duffield, a veritable magpie of our shared spooky celluloid past, heavy on A QUIET PLACE/’18 and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS/’56.  To his credit, the film is better than one of those two.  Guess which.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, A QUIET PLACE/’18 or BODY SNATCHERS/’56.  (The 1978 A-list upgrade nearly as good).  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-quiet-place-2018.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/invasion-of-body-snatchers-1956.html

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