“It’s time for horror movies, and the best of 2023 so far is Brian Duffield’s.” “No one will save you” released directly to Hulu.
What makes this sci-fi thriller unique is its lack of dialogue. Only five words are spoken during the film’s exhilarating 93-minute running time.
Brynn Adams (Kaitlyn Dever) lives alone, far out in the country. She mourns the death of her mother Sarah and best friend Maud. These two deaths fill Brynn with guilt and trauma. Everyone in the nearby town, Mill River, seems to be avoiding her.
One night, Brynn wakes up to find an unearthly intruder in her home. Frightened and resourceful, Brynn defends herself against the chirping creature’s ability to use telekinesis, which leads to its death. But she is soon pursued by alien cohorts who place a parasite in her mouth, causing her to hallucinate. If I told you more it would spoil the effect.
Written, directed and produced by Brian Duffield (Spontaneously, Love and Monsters), revolving around the theme of self-forgiveness, the film was shot by Aaron Morton in Slidell, Louisiana, in a house built in the late 19th century.th century, which production designer Ramsey Avery filled with clues about Brynn’s backstory, such as her intricate, idyllic dioramas.
Visual effects producer Sarah Misen noted that the depictions of the alien invaders were based on archetypal drawings made in the 1950s by people who either claimed to have had close encounters with flying saucers or were abducted and subjected to psychic examination by aliens.
And engineer/mixer Chris Terhune collaborated with composer Joseph Trapanese on additional audio elements.
Just three days after the book’s release, writer Stephen King tweeted the following endorsement: “NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU – brilliant, brave, exciting, scary. You’d have to go back more than 60 years to the TWILIGHT ZONE episode “The Invaders” (1961) to find anything remotely like it.”
Director Guillermo del Toro wrote: “I couldn’t think of a more perfect movie for your weekend.”
On a Granger scale of 1 to 10, Nobody’s Gonna Save You is a tense and controversial 8 streaming on Hulu.
Science fiction films about artificial intelligence and robotics can be scary or confusing. “I am a mother” falls into the latter category.
The action takes place in a huge automated underground laboratory. The story begins with an angular, one-eyed android, embodied by Luke Hawker (who oversaw its production at New Zealand’s Weta Workshop) and softly voiced by Rose Byrne.
Calling himself Mother, he selects one test-tube embryo from thousands held in cryogenic stasis to begin the work of repopulating humanity after a horrific global extinction event.
After 24 hours in a womb-like incubator, the female embryo develops into a crying baby, who is soothed by the Mother singing “My Child.”
As time passes, she grows into a toddler, a teenager, and soon a teenager identified only as Daughter (Clara Rugaard).
Determined to create a “smarter and more ethical” human race, Mother teaches Daughter all sorts of moral lessons while honing her physical, intellectual, and emotional skills.
While she is free to roam the vast “reformulation center”, Mother forbids the curious Daughter from going outside, as Mother describes it as a post-apocalyptic wasteland where the air is polluted.
But one night, when the metal Mother has shut down, the lonely Daughter hears a knock on the steel outer door of the bunker. Much to her surprise, she discovers an injured woman (Hilary Swank) who needs help.
When the overprotective Mother wakes up, she is immediately “alert” and goes to the Daughter. – Is this a droid? asks a frightened Woman who has apparently encountered hostile droids in the outside world.
Inevitably, a relationship develops between the lonely, wary Daughter and the darkly desperate Woman – to the predictable horror of the manipulative Mother.
“I was created to value human life above all else,” Mother explains. “I couldn’t stand by and watch humanity slowly succumb to its self-destructive nature.”
Michael Lloyd Green’s dystopian allegory was filmed in Australia by debutant director Grant Sputon and premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Why wasn’t he released immediately? Perhaps because the tension will subside and the conclusion will be complex and confusing.
On the Granger scale, I Am Mother is a disappointing, awkward A, streaming on Netflix.
Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism under Pierre Salinger at Mills College and graduated with honors in journalism from the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to writing articles for newspapers and magazines, she worked for many years in radio and television as a presenter and film critic. You can see all her reviews at www.susanranger.com.