We analyze the film "No One Will Save You," in which the main character, using a box cutter and a kitchen lighter, deals with an alien invasion and her own past traumas.

Good writers, screenwriters, and even copywriters have a principle – show, don't tell. Usually it means revealing characters through actions rather than descriptions, immersing the reader through events rather than references to them.

Director and screenwriter Brian Duffield in his second film (by the way, the first is also worth attention) under the rather mundane horror title "No One Will Save You" went further – the film has no dialogue at all, and in an hour and a half of screen time, fewer than 20 words are spoken!

It would seem that with such a visual approach, everything should be obvious. But in reality, the film leaves behind a mass of questions and possibilities for interpretation. In this article, we will try to make sense of what we saw and explain what the film is about and what its lengthy ending means.

Warning: spoilers for the film "No One Will Save You" follow

Did Brynn survive?

Kaitlyn Dever in the film "No One Will Save You" plays the role of Brynn, a girl leading a reclusive lifestyle in the town of Mill River. She lives alone, dances, visits the grave of her recently deceased mother, and does not need help from others – until one fateful moment.

One night, an alien breaks into her house, and Brynn accidentally kills it. The next day, she realizes this is not an isolated incident – the aliens have decided to invade Mill River seriously and for a long time.

If after this description you thought that watching "No One Will Save You" would be another horror survival story where monsters are replaced by aliens in their almost classic pop-culture form, then you would be partly right.

Most of the runtime is taken up by Brynn's struggle with the aliens who have invaded the town, although many episodes are not lacking in originality (for example, with one of the "guests" the girl fights using... boiling water from pots!). But this is just the wrapper and the entertaining part of the story, which turns out to be much deeper.

After the attack on her house, Brynn goes to town for help, but it soon becomes clear that no one will help her. They don't want to talk to her, and the police chief's wife spits on her, so the girl does the only reasonable thing: she leaves town.

At least, she tries to, but when she gets on the bus, Brynn is attacked by the local mailman, who has been taken over by the aliens. Another passenger also starts attacking the girl, and although Dever's character manages to escape and return home, on the way she sees another group of Mill River residents staring at the sky.

Obviously, the problem has already spread beyond her house, as crop circles appear all over town. Brynn decides to prepare for a new fight with the alien invaders. During the second night, she kills a couple more aliens, but there are too many of them, and the girl is still not Ellen Ripley.

Brynn is caught in one of the spaceship's tractor beams, which "freezes" her in place, while another alien expels a parasite that then enters the girl's mouth. Waking up, she finds her house looks perfectly normal, but something is wrong: she sees her childhood friend Maude, who died when she was 12.

"I'm sorry, Maude… I'm sorry," Brynn says to her (the only "dialogue" in the entire film) for reasons that will soon become clear. Realizing this is just a fantasy, Dever's character pulls the parasite out of her throat.

From this parasite, the aliens later create a fake Brynn, who stabs the real Brynn with a knife. But not fatally, and the real girl in response slits the fake one's throat with a box cutter (one of the many "Chekhov's guns" scattered throughout the film).

And the girl's ordeal does not end there, as another spaceship arrives. Brynn is again caught in a tractor beam, but this time she is lifted inside the "saucer." Several aliens watch what is happening, one of them touches the girl's forehead and sees her memories, including how she built a model of the town with her deceased mother.

But most importantly, we finally learn why the residents of Mill River avoided Brynn and why she spent the first half of the film writing apology letters to her friend Maude. During a childhood quarrel, Brynn hit Maude, the police chief's daughter, on the head with a stone, accidentally killing her.

The aliens continue to watch as Brynn comes face to face with her younger self, and she places her hand on young Brynn's hand, finally acknowledging her childhood trauma. And now, it seems, she is ready to move on. Answering the question in the title – yes, Brynn survived, and she even gets a happy ending... of sorts.

What happens at the end of "No One Will Save You"

Seeing the girl's reconciliation with herself, the aliens decide to let her go.

The next day, Brynn goes to Mill River, and it becomes clear that all the residents have either been replaced by alien doubles, as we saw with the creation of fake Brynn, or have been taken over by the aliens.

In any case, Brynn no longer lives with humans. When the residents of Mill River wave to the girl, we hear the characteristic alien "voice" that we heard throughout the film.

Later in the evening, Brynn looks happier than ever, dancing along with the other "residents." She has now effectively ended up in the model town she built with her mother, if you ignore the fact that everyone except Brynn is now dead. A glance at several spaceships in the sky suggests this has happened not only in Mill River.

This idyll might seem like a dream, a hallucination, or a deathbed agony. But there is an argument in favor of it being reality – Brynn has healing scars on her head.

Why did the aliens decide to leave the girl alone?

There is no obvious answer. Perhaps they saw themselves in her – a recluse whom everyone considers a monster and does not want to make contact with.

Perhaps they understood that Brynn resisted them only because of her past trauma. It is no coincidence that the accidental killings of Maude and the first alien are so synonymous. And when the girl came to terms with her past, perhaps the aliens realized she would no longer be a problem or a threat to them.

And since everyone in town hated the girl for years because of her childhood mistake, Brynn would hardly miss any of them.

What Brian Duffield himself says about the film's ending

I knew that the finale had to have something important for Brynn. Also, I love the character of Brynn, and I know Kaitlyn does too, and I think we both were very protective of her. She had dealt with a lot of emotional issues before the film even started, and then we just kicked her ass throughout the movie. I love A24 and I thought we could have done a real ending with her death or something, but I liked the character too much to rub salt in the wounds. So I wanted her to be better off at the end than at the beginning of the film, no matter what.

And I wanted her to have some element of community, because that's an important element of the film, that she's disconnected from society. Then I thought, what would that community be? And I just thought, "Oh, she'll probably have a dance…" but that sounded too crazy, but I couldn't think of another idea. So that was in the script, and I kept thinking, "Well, someone will tell me 'no' at some point," but then, no, that never happened.

I think for me the film is about that – about how fateful things happen, and then you have to rebuild and sort things out. I know some people have said, "Oh, she died or is dreaming," or something like that. I think there is material there to suggest anything, but I think for Brynn as a character, it's a real experience she goes through. You can interpret it [as a dream], especially because of where she is before that, but I don't know how much I believe you can heal in a dream. I like dark horror endings, but I like Brynn more. I think in every version of the ending there is no definite element of darkness, but for me an important part of the ending is that Brynn is in a good place.

Which version of the ending is closer to you?