SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for No One Will Save You. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
One doesn’t really need to dive beyond the surface of No One Will Save You to appreciate it. The conceit of a lonely young woman fighting for her life during a home invasion orchestrated by extraterrestrials makes for 93 minutes of cinematic excellence. Writer/director Brian Duffield makes you care about protagonist Brynn Adams (Kaitlyn Dever), and then he proceeds to run her through a ringer of ever-escalating terror – and it’s gripping every step of the way. Those qualities alone qualify it for consideration as one of the best horror movies of the year, but what particularly makes it special is the way in which it meditates on its key theme: grief.
There are a number of great horror movies that deal with the subjects of mourning and loss, but what makes No One Will Save You stand out is that the structure of the story and Brynn’s emotional experience can be mapped to the classic five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I can’t say how purposeful this was in Brian Duffield’s construction of the screenplay, but the metaphor struck me while reflecting on the film in the days after I watched it, and it’s only enhanced my appreciation of the work.
Denial
Early in No One Will Save You, the audience is clued into the fact that not everything is super ok in the life of Brynn Adams. She lives a life of total solitude, dedicates time writing letters to a deceased friend, and she shrinks in terror at the sight of a police officer and her wife she clearly knows. But you wouldn’t really know that if you were simply judging her by her disposition. She orchestrates her insular existence with smiles and sunshine, not properly dealing with the issues of her past.
Her home life is dedicated to sewing pretty dresses that she sells online and building a cute and charming model village in her living room. When she hops in her car and rides into town, she makes efforts to avoid people, but also gives a young man a grin and a wave… even though she clearly knows what kind of reaction she is going to get. It’s a case of denial – and kicking off the metaphor, what is her first reaction when she first sees evidence of extraterrestrial invasion a.k.a. a brown circle on her lawn? She grabs a hose and waters it, barely taking a moment to question it.
Anger
Then the aliens arrive! Just as anyone of us would be, Brynn is terrified beyond rational thought when she wakes up in the middle of the night and discovers that there is somebody in her house. And, naturally, her fear doesn’t dissipate when she realizes that the invaders are of the extraterrestrial variety. As far as fight or flight reflexes are concerned, the protagonist initially leans toward the latter – sneaking around her house and making efforts to avoid detection – but when the time comes for confrontation, she responds to the moment, and what unfolds is violence and death.
In the read of No One Will Save You where the aliens represent Brynn’s trauma, the metaphor is pretty clear here. She battles with the home invader, and her panic and fear in the moment lead to her thrusting a model church steeple through a sentient creature’s head (Which, it should be noted, mirrors the rage-fueled incident from her past that is her trauma.)
Bargaining
This is the stage in the film where the title of No One Will Save You is most prominent. It’s at this point in the grieving process where an individual tries to strike a deal with a higher power to halt or end their suffering, and for Brynn, this comes in two forms.
Her first attempt at bargaining is going into town and seeking help from the people who have figuratively been spitting on her for the last 10 years – and the result is that she gets literally spit on. The second bargain comes when she is paralyzed in alien light and has a parasite inserted in her throat. She is offered a deal to live in a fantastical reality provided she play host to an organism from outer space… though in this particular case, Brynn makes the healthy decision and chooses life.
Depression
After rejecting the alien parasite and pulling it out of her throat, the Kiwano melon-esque thing morphs and transforms into a clone of Brynn – and it’s here where the metaphor gets super strong. Sigmund Freud once said that depression is anger turned inward, and No One Will Save You presents that idea with a confrontation between the protagonist and her copy. The clone is the first to strike, stabbing Brynn in the gut with a broken piece of wood, but then our heroine strikes back – slicing her foe’s neck with her box cutter. It’s suicide… but not.
Brynn’s response to this death is to openly weep – her grief overflowing… but it’s not over yet. That being said, it’s not surprising that the next sequence, when she is at her lowest, is when she gets captured and abducted.
Acceptance
Taken aboard the alien spaceship, Brynn experiences what could be considered one of the most radical psychotherapy sessions in cinema. She is a curiosity to the otherworldly beings, and they seemingly use their special abilities to try and understand her. With a touch to her forehead, Brynn suddenly finds herself inhabiting her own memories, and while her first experience is a moment with her mom, she then finally confronts the moment that has defined her entire life: during a fight, she accidentally killed her best friend, Maude, with a rock.
It’s heartbreaking, and Brynn is powerless to stop the past… but what’s key to this analysis of No One Will Save You is what comes next. In the aftermath of the awful incident, young Brynn is shown all alone and seemingly writing her first letter to Maude – and adult Brynn goes over to her and takes her hand. It’s a 180 degree turn from the confrontation with the clone, as she comforts and accepts herself after reliving her most painful moment.
Returned to Earth with a hard drop, Brynn is able to truly smile and laugh – and with her entire town infested with alien parasites at the end of the movie, she is free of everyone’s judgements from the past and can live a happier and more well-adjusted life. It’s the happiness she deserves after the hell that she is put through over the course of the entire movie.
Regardless of whether or not the five stages of grief structure is intentional or unintentional in No One Will Save You, the movie is a brilliant piece of work that only gets better the more you think about it. If you care to check it out again, you can always rewatch it with a Hulu subscription.
