If you are here after watching the sci-horror gem, ‘No One Will Save You’ on Hulu and wish to have more movies that also tap into the potential of the cinematic medium itself, you’re at the right place.
Brian Duffield’s film follows Bryan (Kaitlyn Dever), a young girl who has been isolated from her own community. However, in the confines of her home, she spends her days engrossed in solitary pursuits—tinkering with trinkets, crafting culinary delights, and dancing to her heart’s content. That is until her idyllic existence is violently disrupted when the home is invaded by an otherworldly entity that she has to confront all on her own.
The director uses the home invasion genre and turns the invasion itself into some kind of metaphor; Duffield allows Brynn to unearth her past, making a sci-horror that truly stands as a groundbreaking achievement for the audacious choice of using almost no line of dialogue and diving directly into a resounding soundscape.
If you are looking for movies that, like No One Will Save You on Hulu, will not just terrify you but also leave you with an afterthought, here are some recommendations:
1. Close Encounters of The Third Kind (1977)
Of course, the first movie that will come to mind when you think of Hulu’s No One Will Save You is Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Director Duffield has been cited as saying that Spielberg’s film greatly inspired him, and it’s quite evident to see the parallels here.
Like Brynn in No One Will Save You, Roy Neary, the protagonist in Close Encounters, becomes so increasingly obsessed with the image of the alien species that he slowly starts dissociating from his family. The isolation here causes him to find out more about them.
While the themes of survival and understanding oneself are present in both films, No One Will Save You takes a fighting approach to its many metaphors, which makes it stand out from its inspiration.
2. Signs (2002)
The central theme of moving on from tragedy whilst an alien invasion is used as a metaphor is present in both No One Will Save You and M. Night Shyamlan’s Signs.
The plot revolves around a family living on a farm in rural Pennsylvania who begins to experience mysterious and unexplained phenomena in their cornfields. Much like Brynn in No One Will Save You, the alien invasion here is encompassed by the family having to deal with the strange crop circles that appear on their property and the increasing signs of a possible extraterrestrial presence.
However, the threat and the possibility of a fight with these species is not the main point of the film. Signs delves into the personal struggles and emotions of the family members as a possible threat is about to knock on their doors.
3. A Quiet Place (2018)
Directed by John Krasinski, who also co-wrote the screenplay and stars alongside wife Emily Blunt, The Quiet Place is set in a post-apocalyptic world where Earth has been overrun by mysterious creatures that hunt by sound. These creatures are blind but have highly developed hearing abilities, making even the slightest noise potentially deadly.
The film follows the Abbott family, which includes Lee, Evelyn, and their children, Regan, Marcus, and Beau. The family must navigate their lives in near-complete silence to avoid attracting the attention of these deadly creatures. They communicate through sign language and take elaborate precautions to minimize noise, such as walking barefoot, using sand paths, and using soundproofing measures in their home.
Both Hulu’s No One Will Save You and The Quiet Place are movies that share the idea of no dialogue to heighten other soundscape features. Both horror movies are built upon the idea of being caught in a battle with the unknown and how to deal with it.
4. Hush (2016)
While there are home invasion movies by the dozen, Mike Flanagan’s film Hush comes eerily close to Hulu’s No One Will Save You. The fact that both films use silence as a natural entity that drives horror makes them similar to each other.
Hush evolves around a deaf and mute writer named Maddie Young, played by Kate Siegel herself, who lives alone in a secluded house in the woods. Maddie’s peaceful life is suddenly disrupted when a masked intruder begins stalking and terrorizing her.
The majority of the film is a tense cat-and-mouse game between Maddie and the intruder, who is intent on breaking into her house. Since Maddie is deaf, she must rely on her wits and resourcefulness to outsmart her assailant and defend herself. While there’s no surprising alien invasion here, both movies share their DNA and themes of isolation to amp up the thrills.
5. Nope (2022)
Nope was one of the best horror movies of 2022, and rightly so, because it doesn’t just stick to traditional horror and does something remarkable with its allegory. Following a seasoned horse wrangler and his determined sister who together embark on a quest to document the eerie and lethal phenomenon haunting their arid desert town, Nope has some really intriguing metaphors about movie-making itself wrapped in its terror. While trauma isolation is part of what this monster feature is all about, the alien entity represented much more than the life-threatening image it has been provided on the surface.
Jordan Peel’s Nope shares quite a few similarities with No One Will Save You on Hulu, but one of the most important ones is how they both use this invasion and threat to make a bigger point.
6. Run Rabbit Run (2023)
The Hulu Original Film No One Will Save You can serve as a great double bill with this year’s breakout Sundance hit, Run Rabbit Run. Starring Sarah Snook as a fertility doctor, the movie flips and completely unravels on its head when her young daughter claims that she can see into her past life.
Much like No One Will Save You, Run Rabbit Run is one of those horror movies that uses the psychology of its character to deal with the traumas of the past. So, in spite of the absence of aliens, the movies actually delve into the burden of the past and how not dealing with them manifests into something they don’t recognize.
