NEW STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This newsletter aggressively spoils things.
One thing I can tell you about writers in general: We love to blow minds. Any time we think we have a really amazing idea for a twist, or an ending that will re-contextualize everything that went before, we will take the swing and try to serve that steaming plate of holy shit! to you1. We can’t help ourselves. The moment we start cackling with evil glee after having an idea, that idea is going to be written2.
Sometimes, the idea takes over. When that happens we wind up writing for the idea, writing towards that idea—that twist, or that super cool ending. This sometimes works, but usually it leads you into a thorny patch of stopgap writing designed to keep that one plate spinning, often to the detriment of all the other plates you’ve got spinning around. The final result is usually disappointing, because the Big Idea winds up being underwhelming, in large part because the story that’s supporting it has suffered, and all your tricks and single-minded efforts to keep the Big Idea afloat have made it tortured and artificial-feeling3.
This brings us to No One Will Save You, one of those weirdo horror movies that just sort of popped up out of nowhere, at least as far as I’m concerned4. This is a film that is very interesting for most of its run, and then swerves into a big swing at the end that doesn’t quite work, but you kind of wish it had.
Enjoy the Silence
The most striking aspect of No One Will Save You is the almost complete lack of dialog—there are about three words spoken in the course of the entire film; most of the sounds are just Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) grunting and occasionally weeping5. That leaves most of the storytelling to be done visually, which the film does a pretty good job of doing. In short order we know a fair amount of Brynn and her life: She lives alone in her childhood home on the outskirts of a rural small town; her mother and best friend Maude are dead; the entire town seems to hate and despise her6, especially Maude’s parents. Brynn is clearly desperately lonely as she drinks wine and dances alone in her house, and the choice to have zero dialog underscores this nicely—you don’t know how much noise and talk matters until you have no one to share it with7.
Then, at night, Brynn is woken up by a noise, and discovers an alien—a classic Grey—rummaging about her house. A game of cat and mouse turns violent as the alien attempts to subdue Brynn, and she fights with increasing desperation, eventually killing it more through luck than any kind of skill. The next day, Brynn wakes up and flees the wreckage of her house into town8. Along the way she finds evidence that other homes have been invaded, and that people are being controlled by parasites the aliens are implanting inside them. She tries to ask for help, but the townsfolk hate her so much she winds up attempting to flee, and is eventually chased back to her house when alien-controlled folks come after her.
This part of the story is kind of great; the silent, visual storytelling works because Dever offers a physical, believable performance. She’s neither an Action Asskicker or a wimp; she makes reasonably smart decisions9 and demonstrates no real talent for physical violence.
Slowly, she’s ground down. The aliens have superior numbers, telekinetic powers (though in true Holly wood tradition they conveniently forget about these powers when the plot needs them to), and apparent control of the whole town. Eventually Brynn is sucked up into one of their ships in a kind of tractor beam. And then the whole things falls apart10.
So Shines a Good Deed In a Weary World
The aliens have the ability to poke around Brynn’s mind, so they do, and we learn what Brynn did to make the town hate her, and that her life has been very sad and lonely since then. Okay! This apparently moves the aliens in some way, and they decide to send Brynn back down to Earth, not place a parasite in her, and ... leave her be. The final shot is Brynn living a version of her best life, because the entire town is now controlled by parasites and so they smile at her, dance with her, and generally welcome her with open arms11.
It’s possible this is an illusion; earlier, when Brynn was briefly controlled by a parasite, she was given a fantasy world to experience where Maude was still alive and everything was great. So one interpretation is that the ending is just a refined fantasy that’s much more palatable to Brynn. But I think it’s actually what happens, and it makes no sense: Why would a bunch of murderous aliens do this? Why would they put the whole town in the service of this one girl? Because she was sad12?
Call it a Big Swing Ending, which is when the ending takes a swerve that is so crazy it just might work! It does not work in this instance, but I can sympathize with the idea. Brynn has been ostracized and abused for years. She’s miserable. She likely has come to hate the people in town even as she realizes they are not wrong to hate her. So I can see the idea of this Big Swing: Brynn is given a chance to be happy, to really live once humanity has been destroyed13.
Okay! There’s something there. But the film doesn’t do the work. It gives us no reason why the aliens would do this, or any reason to believe they would understand Brynn’s emotional life or care in any way. They sell Brynn’s isolation and misery, but not that she would hate the people around her so much she’d be okay with them being puppeteered as her fake community. It’s very much like there’s a SCENE MISSING title card between Brynn being sucked up into the ship and the final shot.
This is the problem with Big Swings: Giving them too much context and buildup risks telegraphing where the story is going, which undermines their power because it gives the audience too much to think and go, uh, what? But dropping it at the end like that gets the shock value, but ruins everything else, because it doesn’t feel organically linked. What would feel organically linked? Brynn dying, of course14. But that’s a bummer, and its expectedness can feel boring, whereas the Big Swing feels dramatic and risky. And it is! Because Big Swings usually fail.
Personally, the moment I see an alien in my house I am setting the place on fire. But then, that’s my solution to most problems, including ants, tax bills, and running out of whiskey. I’m on like my 10th house now and I’m starting to suspect I need a new strategy.
NEXT WEEK: Moonlighting and the memory hole.
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I should probably think these metaphors out a little better instead of implying that reading my writing is like eating a plate of shit.
For example: The 500,000 word novel I’m working on set in a universe where it’s eventually revealed that everyone is an action figure being played with by a child god. THAT SOUND YOU HEARD WAS YOUR MIND BLOWING.
This is like when I start telling a funny story and I can tell you’re not finding it funny at all so I just start speaking faster and louder to try to convey how seriously funny the story is and long story short this is why I have 15 restraining orders against me.
To be fair, I spend a lot of my time being surprised to discover that other people exist and are out there just doing stuff.
No, this is not a biography about me. You are mean to think so.
One relates. Every time I leave the house, a police car starts following me around.
Plus, you start talking to yourself, and over the years you normalize just talking to yourself, and then you start talking to the cats and over the years you normalize talking to the cats and then one day your wife walks into the room and you’re basically staging a three-act play with the cats and you will never live it down.
Here she engages in one of my pet peeves: The sliver of glass in your foot that doesn’t seem to hurt at all. Have you ever had a sliver of glass in your foot? That shit will cripple you.
Although at one point she does hang a blanket over a doorway with the apparent expectation it will stop intruders, and the aliens apparently take this very seriously as they use their weird telekinetic powers to sloooowwwly remove the nails instead of, you know, just walking through a fucking blanket.
The rules are simple, people: Never show the monster, and never have your character sucked up into the mothership. Because then you have to describe the monster, and people will wonder where the toilets are in the mothership.
Would I implant parasites into everyone so they’re nice to me and I can go through my life without crippling social anxiety? All I’m saying is that I would listen to that sales pitch.
To be fair, I traditionally treat sad women like a wildfire: I just desperately want it to stop.
I fall squarely in the Time Enough at Last category of people: If I was the last human being alive I would view it as a chance to finally catch up on my reading.
Although this is one of those alien invasion stories where the aliens have tractor beams and spaceships and psychic powers and yet they apparently must murder humanity one at a time via strangulation. It’s as if you had an infestation of ants in your house and you decided the only way to deal with them was to challenge each ant individually to a duel instead of just unleashing some Raid.
Footnote 7 spoke to me. The spawn and I can go a few days without saying more than "hey," and then I have the urgent need to burst into his room and babble at him about stuff he has no interest in, while he smiles and nods. This is known as "Sam pays the rent."