No One Will Save You

 M. Night Shyamalan famously tried to milk suspense out of an alien invasion from your conspiracy-standard grey aliens. Successfully, even - the problem with Signs wasn't the threat, it was the extremely writerly conceits Shyamalan ballasted his script with. Because a doomsday scenario isn't enough to keep viewers engaged, I guess.

 Two decades later we get another movie that attempts the exact same thing... and fails for pretty much the exact same reasons.

 Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) lives alone in a big old house in the outskirts of a small town. She seems happy, except for her mom being dead and some unspecified trauma. Perky, enthusiastic, and... well, a little too quirky, to be honest, but that's mainly down to the film's gimmick: there are barely any spoken lines at all, so to compensate Dever is directed to emote like there's no tomorrow. The few times anyone does talk, it's way down in the mix, almost unintelligible.

 Brynn's exaggerated, cartoonily upbeat demeanor only lasts until her first interaction with a neighbour (and, it's implied not too subtly, potential crush), who returns a friendly wave with a similarly over-emoted, withering look of disgust. Brynn deflates in a way that all but demands a sad trombone playing in the background.

 As it quickly becomes apparent, Brynn is a social outcast - everyone in town hates her and makes no bones about it, despite her being friendly to a fault. This is, of course, is all part of her mystery trauma, with clues as to its nature carefully parcelled out throughout the movie. It also explains the silence that smothers the whole movie; It's a cute, if glaringly blunt, conceit.

 The alien invasion happens on that same night we meet Brynn. She wakes up to some noise downstairs and finds a very noisy, very clumsy little grey man stumbling around. It's a pretty cool variation on a home invasion scene, especially when the alien reveals telekinetic powers. It does raise the same question Signs did - to wit, how the hell did these (space) clowns ever get to interstellar travel?*

 Brynn, plucky heroine that she is, survives the attack, and the next morning opts to get the hell out of Dodge - which reveals the next stage of the alien invasion in probably the movie's most effective scene. From there it's a series of confrontations with the greys, putting the poor woman through the wringer, while at the same time slowly explaining why she's a pariah.

 Technically it's very well shot, with writer/director Brian Duffield providing a few tense, well paced sequences and some cleverly blocked shots. The beautiful cinematography comes courtesy of (hello again!) Aaron Morton. The effects are excusably shoddy for a low-budget picture like this, with some nice, weird imagery and fun variations on standard alien iconography offsetting some pretty dodgy physicality in the scuffles with the monsters and terrible-looking effects for things wriggling under the skin (and to be fair, that's a type of effect that's defeated much better-funded movies). The practical effects fare better, with some clever use of lighting to depict future technology.

 Dever's the best thing in the movie, and is wonderful as Brynn- She makes a hugely artificial character work through sheer effort and talent.

 So there are enough pieces in play for a nasty, effective little thriller... but ultimately it's all let down by the writing; The script in this thing is fucking terrible.

 I'm not going to treat it as a science fiction movie, because it's only wearing that skin to tell a... I guess a fable about self-forgiveness and the crushing weight of guilt and public censure intertwined with a straightforward run-away-from-invading-aliens yarn.

 As far as the plot goes the aliens are nicely inscrutable, even if their actions made me laugh a few times (they have a fondness for spelling out alien letters with their bodies like lanky, creepy cheerleaders). That's... well, not all good, but all good fun, and I like bold choices like that even if they don't work. What bothers me is that they are fucking incompetent, their technology inconsistent from one scene to the next, and their threat level varies arbitrarily from situation to situation depending on whatever is convenient for the script.

 Even worse is Brynn's story and the way it integrates with that plot - It's handled so cack-handedly it's hard to take seriously. And when the secret is out... don't get me wrong, it's a horrible thing to happen to anyone, but it's also deeply underwhelming. It completely fails to upend your understanding of the character in any way, and it renders her situation even more simplistic, the society that's shunned her for a decade that much more a caricature.
 The whole film is yoked to an idea that doesn't really work and has very little weight. Had her crime been less mundane, harder to forgive - something actually shocking, like, I dunno, a school shooting - maybe it'd be on to something. As it is, there's no substance, no impact.

 Why do the aliens find her situation so fascinating? I have no idea; I suspect it's just the script writing itself into a corner yet again. But at least it leads to a deeply contrived, but also really fun ending that finally shows a little of the wit that the rest of the movie sorely lacks.

* No offense to the Killer Klowns from outer space, which are legit. Also: how would they be able to take over any town in America? Brynn manages to take a couple down with her tiny frame, blind luck, and improvised weapons - what happens when they try to invade an average home in the ol' US of A, which I'm led to believe holds multiple John-Wick-style weapon lockers?