No One Will Save You Actually Used An Extremely Valuable Studio Note About The Aliens [Exclusive]
Brian Duffield's "No One Will Save You" is a lean, highly-effective alien thriller, with minimal dialogue and some seriously scary gray men. Alien films are nothing new, but in our era of films written by algorithms, it feels like a miracle to watch a direct-to-streaming film so fresh and unique. Fortunately, 20th Century Studios was on board with Duffield's vision from the beginning.
As he told our own Ethan Anderton during an interview, "I'll tell you the truth, when we were out selling the movie, a bunch of places were like, 'How will people know what's going on when they're doing laundry?'" I love a good f***-off movie, but allowing people who aren't actually watching the film to dictate a greenlight makes me hope the aliens take me next. "The thing that was so cool about working with 20th is, I think they make movies for people that love movies," Duffield said. "Which, hopefully, is not to dismiss other places. But it was so cool working with those guys because they really love movies."
According to Duffield, the studio notes he received were not the type known to ruin movies, but to help him more effectively accomplish his goals. "Even if I disagreed with one of their notes, it would really challenge me, because I was like, 'They're really smart, and they really love the movie. So if I'm disagreeing, it's coming from a really interesting place.'" And one note in particular helped the film become the best it could be.
"A big thing for the studio, which I think no other studio in the world would ever say this, is they really wanted to make sure the aliens never tipped into being evil," Duffield said.
'They can't blow something up'
During the post-production VFX bids, "No One Will Save You" shows the alien ships hovering over different locations. At one point, there was a thought about showing the ships blowing up something in the background, but the studios didn't want it. As Duffield explained:
"The studio was like, 'They can't blow something up because ...' and then they would have this very logical reason about that, and they would sell it. That was something really interesting, and that was something I pitched them when I started the movie. I was like, 'These invaders are coming, but they're not coming thinking they're bad guys.' That makes them a little interesting and a little unusual. That was something that the studio was making sure, if this alien's going after Brynn really hard, did she do something that really triggered that behavior? That was a really fun, tug of war is too harsh sounding, but that was something that the studio was always like, 'Remember, you got to walk this line with these grays. They are the villains, but they're not evil.'"
Duffield said this made the film a lot more fun to work on, especially in the third act. Not allowing the aliens to be evil allows the conflict to be complicated and leaves room for nuanced interpretations. "I think most other places would've been like, 'Yeah, they should be nuking cities,'" he said. "At one point they were like, 'Oh, they should put out that fire.' I was like, 'That's really funny.' Then the alien's character would dictate that they should put out the fire and not start the fire. I was like, 'That's really cool.'" There you have it, folks. Studio notes: not always a bad thing!
"No One Will Save You" is now available to stream on Hulu.