‘No One Will Save You’ Review: Kaitlyn Dever Takes on Aliens in Thriller With Less Talking Than ‘A Quiet Place’

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Godfrey Reggio, creator of the Qatsi trilogy, has been down this road before. The obsessions are familiar — nature’s innocence corrupted by industry, technology and the atomic age — but the audience is presumably different.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic What would a monk want with a gun? Bringing wisdom and a streak of wry humor to his Bhutan-set sophomore feature, “The Monk and the Gun” director Pawo Choyning Dorji teases any number of possible answers to that question over the course of a droll, shrewdly satirical fable, in which Western values crash against a seemingly intransigent (but potentially more enlightened) South Asian culture. A gifted storyteller who keeps audiences guessing about his characters’ motives until the surprising moment everything comes together, Dorji was born in Bhutan, but attended university in Wisconsin.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic SPOILER ALERT: The following review contains spoilers about the reason for all the killing. Years ago, Indian director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat fell asleep on a cross-country train ride, only to discover upon reaching his destination that the cars on either side of his had been robbed by armed bandits, known as “dacoits.” The heist couldn’t have been too intense, or it would have awakened him, but it got the helmer’s gears turning about what a truly terrifying train raid might look like. The answer: “Kill,” in which a crew of 40-odd thieves board a train, intending to steal passengers’ watches and phones, then turn bloodthirsty after running into a pair of hardheaded commandos.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Shia LaBeouf doesn’t appear until more than 20 minutes into “Henry Johnson,” a new David Mamet play making its world premiere at the Electric Lodge in Venice, Calif. The play amounts to just four scenes, barely more than an hour in all (plus an unnecessary 15-minute intermission). LaBeouf is on stage for just two of them, but the instant the film star materializes, something electric happens.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Werner Herzog has traveled to the ends of the earth for his art, rolling cameras in places rarely seen by human eyes — from rapids along the Amazon River for 1972’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” to the rim of an active volcano in Antarctica. But what’s inside Herzog’s head is what fascinates fans of the German director. As revealed in a new memoir, “Every Man for Himself and God Against All” (the phrase served as the original title of his 1974 film “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser”), Herzog’s far-ranging filmography represents only a fraction of the encounters and adventures that have shaped his worldview.

No One Will Save You after it was released on Hulu this month.The author, who is best known for penning horror classics such as The Shining and It, described the film as “brilliant” and “daring” in a post on X (fka Twitter).“NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU: Brilliant, daring, involving, scary,” King wrote. “You have to go back over 60 years, to a TWILIGHT ZONE episode called ‘The Invaders’ to find anything remotely like it.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In “The Successor” — a provocative psychological thriller with a lot more actual psychology than the genre typically offers — Paris-based fashion designer Ellias Barnès (Marc-André Grondin) stands on the precipice of a breakthrough in his career. He’s poised to take his place as creative director of the fashion house Orsino, following the death of its eponymous founder. If this were a tale of corporate ambition (à la “Succession”), or perhaps a Roman palace intrigue, here is the moment that Ellias would assume the throne.

Anna Marie de la Fuente “Monster,” Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan Described by Variety critic Peter Debruge as a “convoluted portrait of a pre-teen in turmoil,” Kore-eda ‘s Palme d’Or best script and Queer Palm winner stars Sakura Andō as a mother who confronts a teacher after noticing odd changes in her son’s demeanor. Written by Yuji Sakamoto, it’s scored by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto. “Peafowl,” Byun Sungbin, South Korea Myung, a transgender, is estranged from her family because of who she is.

William Earl SPOILER ALERT: This article discusses plot points in “No One Will Save You.” Horror Film School is a new feature in which talent in front of and behind the camera share the ins and outs of creating the biggest onscreen scares. “No One Will Save You,” out Friday on Hulu, is an incredibly lean genre movie: Aliens come down and invade the house of reclusive loner Brynn Adams (Kaitlyn Dever), and she must defend her property and warn her small town that extraterrestrials are trying to assimilate. Writer and director Brian Duffield pulls off two difficult things in his creature feature: The characters speak very little dialogue, and the aliens stalking Brynn are seen early and often — and they’re actually scary.

“No One Will Save You,” the 20th Century Studios alien/home invasion thriller, is one of the year’s most strangely curious, oddly shaped films. Also acting as a thinly drawn character mystery, it’s bold and risk-taking in its structure.

Brian Duffield’s No One Will Save You, now streaming on Hulu, unfolds as a haunting symphony of silence, highlighted by Kaitlyn Dever’s silent acting. Also written by Duffield’s, the meticulous direction of his own script shapes a heightened sense of paranoia, striking the connection between effective visual storytelling and a nuanced narrative. 

Writer/director Brian Duffield has only directed two films so far, but he’s already starting to carve out a specific niche. He’s a filmmaker who loves to take these character-driven, emotional stories and put them against the backdrop of genre.

J. Kim Murphy Nicolas Cage can be a sweet dream or a beautiful nightmare. A24 has released the first trailer for its new dark comedy “Dream Scenario,” from “Sick of Myself” writer-director Kristoffer Borgli.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic The loftier and more dangerous the goal, the finer the line that separates the Guinness Book of World Records from the Darwin Awards. At a certain point, surviving is the only real difference. Do-or-die marathon swimmer Diana Nyad dreamed of swimming from Cuba to Florida.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Four years ago, before COVID turned everything upside-down, a new Asian masterpiece world premiered virtually unnoticed at the Toronto Film Festival. I’m referring to “A Sun,” a multi-faceted Taiwanese family saga from director Chung Mong-Hong that seemed to shift and evolve as it unfolded, challenging what audiences though they knew about the characters.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Early in his career, comedian Kumail Nanjiani did a bit about a new drug called “cheese,” which, if you break down the ingredients, turns out to be Tylenol PM mixed with heroin. “So really, it’s heroin,” he joked. “Heroin’s doing the heavy lifting.” That line was going through my mind as I watched “Pain Hustlers,” a garish and, yes, mostly painful Big Pharma satire from director David Yates, who (“The Legend of Tarzan” aside) spent the last 15 years making increasingly convoluted Harry Potter movies.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic While it’s easy to imagine lawyers screaming “objection, your honor!” to the exaggerated courtroom theatrics of “The Burial,” good luck convincing audiences that this David v. Goliath legal showdown between a small-time Southern funeral home operator and an unethical Canadian billionaire should have played out any other way.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Does it count as a white savior movie if the white character is the one who needs saving? In “Next Goal Wins,” the world’s top-grossing indigenous director, Taika Waititi, retells the story of how American Samoa went from having the world’s worst soccer team to, well, not the worst. While a white man was involved, the movie — which suggests how a film like “Cool Runnings” might be made with 30 years’ more cultural enlightenment — is mostly about how their coach (Michael Fassbender) needs an attitude adjustment. Come to think of it, that’s essentially the formula for most white savior movies.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Just when you thought Nicolas Cage’s filmography couldn’t get any weirder, along comes Kristoffer Borgli’s “Dream Scenario” to mess with your head. Cage plays a character you probably wouldn’t notice in real life: Paul Matthews. Schlubby, balding, in wrinkled pants and brown leather loafers, he’s a tenured professor at a university you’ve never heard of, droning on year after year about collective consciousness and the wisdom of the herd.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In Cord Jefferson’s idea-dense “American Fiction,” no one wants to publish literary professor Thelonious Ellison’s latest novel. Thelonious — or “Monk” to his friends — has delivered a modern reworking of Aeschylus’ “The Persians” (hardly bestseller material to begin with), but all the industry can see is the color of his skin.