Interviews
‘No One Will Save You’ – Brian Duffield Talks Elaborate Alien Mythology and Avoiding Familiar Tropes [Interview]
Up next from filmmaker Brian Duffield (Spontaneous) is No One Will Save You, an intense sci-fi psychological thriller that begins streaming September 22, exclusively on Hulu.
The film introduces Brynn Adams (Kaitlyn Dever), a creative and talented young woman who’s been alienated from her community. And that’s before she’s awoken one night to actual aliens that have invaded her home.
For the film’s release, Bloody Disgusting spoke with Duffield about creating the intense sci-fi home invasion thriller, one that’s so packed with propulsive action that you don’t realize it’s largely devoid of dialogue.
That wasn’t something that Duffield initially planned when writing the genre-bender.
The filmmaker explains, “It was about halfway into writing it. I didn’t realize it for a long time, then I did, and then I was embarrassed that I didn’t realize it for that long. And then I was like, ‘Well, maybe that’s also how people will experience it.’ It became this very funny afterthought that stemmed out of Brynn a lot. And also knowing I didn’t want to do the TV’s explaining what was going on kind of thing. It was a nice surprise. No pun intended, I don’t remember talking about it that much.”
(L-R): Director/Writer Brian Duffield and Kaitlyn Dever on the set of 20th Century Studios’ NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU, exclusively on Hulu. Photo by Sam Lothridge. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
No One Will Save You features Duffield’s take on the quintessential Grey aliens and then some. It brings the realization of how scarce the niche subgenre of sci-fi is, with only a handful of familiar Grey alien features that come to mind, like Signs. When asked if he purposefully tried to avoid retreading familiar ground when writing this feature, he cited a specific film.
“The biggest thing to steer clear of was Fire in the Sky’s abduction scene because it’s so scary. It’s not like rated-R graphic, but it has a real viscerality to it. That was one thing I said, ‘I’m not going near that kind of world.’ Beyond that, you have Close Encounters, which is not scary. The abduction is crazy, but you’re not seeing anything. Then you have stuff like X-Files. But even that, there’s not so much that you need to keep in mind. Again, it wasn’t like I was avoiding Fire in the Sky; it was just in the writing process where I was like, ‘I don’t want to go near that. I like Brynn way too much to watch that.’
“It’s so fun in Fire in the Sky because it’s that dude. But I think if it was Kaitlyn Dever in Fire in the Sky, it’d just be miserable. So, that was more of a tone thing. She gets her ass kicked throughout this movie, but trying to make sure it was on the tone of it not being the movie you wanted to stop watching because it was just a little too hard against her. So, finding that tone. In terms of the iconography, I wanted it to feel like the Greys were smart. I felt like a lot of the movies get very hissy with Greys or get very monster, and you have a hard time connecting the dots between that creature and something that could fly an intergalactic ship. I think a big part of it was trying to give the Greys in the movie, at least, a real elegance, that you’re realizing, ‘Oh, they’re really smart.’”
Kaitlyn Dever as Brynn Adams in 20th Century Studios’ NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU, exclusively on Hulu. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Naturally, the aliens don’t speak human language, meaning No One Will Save You relies on sound and visual clues to tease their background. Duffield created a very expansive mythology behind his aliens.
He explains, “I went deep, yeah. No, they all have names. There’s a whole religion. I mean, I know how they breed. I went all deep into it; it was really fun. And then part of that was just great in terms of even our sound design. It was just fun to say, ‘This is what they’re saying now.’ I didn’t write dialogue, but in talking with Chris [Terhune] and Will [Files], our sound guys, it was like, ‘This is what they’re saying, and then it needs to get repeated enough times that Kaitlyn can kind of understand that they’re repeating something.’ Part of the terror is she doesn’t know what they’re saying, but she knows they’re saying it multiple times. And that being something you’re picking up, it’s a language, and there’s a music to it. And it’s not just growls and clicks; there’s a real process behind it.
“Like we talked about, there’s usually more than one tone that they vocalize at once, and we said each tone is like a sentence. With people, we talk in sentences, and the aliens are speaking in paragraphs at every moment, and so just that download of information. Even if Kaitlyn could understand it, the subtitle block would be big. That was part of the fun; at every turn, how do you make it feel like it’s an insurmountable problem for Kaitlyn to deal with these guys because they are smarter than her? She can get lucky, but there’s never a moment where you’re saying, ‘Oh, she’s going to nuke the ship.'”
See just how insurmountable Brynn’s survival against the Greys becomes when No One Will Save You releases on Hulu on September 22, 2023.
Exclusives
‘Tarot’ Filmmakers Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg on Practical Creature Effects and ‘Insidious’ Inspirations
An evil curse gets awakened in Screen Gems horror movie Tarot when a group of friends recklessly ignore a sacred rule: never use someone else’s deck. Writers/Directors Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg unleash a variety of Tarot card-inspired entities on the group through practical effects, and create an unexpected connection to Insidious along the way.
The film comes exclusively to movie theaters on May 3, 2024.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Cohen and Halberg ahead of Tarot‘s release, where the pair shared more about the film’s practical effects-driven horrors and revealed how Tarot drew from Insidious in a specific way.
To start, though, the filmmakers reveal just how closely their horror movie sticks to the source novel Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams. The short answer is, well, it doesn’t at all!
Cohen explains, “It’s so different. We never even read the book and took nothing from the book. The only thing, the studio had a title that they liked, and so that’s why there was an association. Then we changed the title. So, now there’s literally zero connection to the book.“
“Sony had come to us wanting to make a horror movie about astrology, but there’s nothing that’s inherently scary to us about Zodiac signs. So, we came up with the idea of combining tarot readings and tarot cards with astrology, and that’s what ended up becoming the movie. There’s such incredible iconography in these cards that we really had a plethora of amazing characters to choose from,” Halberg adds.
Adain Bradley ‘Grant’ and Jacob Batalon ‘Paxton’ in Screen Gems TAROT
With a group of seven friends, expect to see their fates sealed by a number of cards. In other words, expect to see a wide variety of Tarot-inspired creatures tormenting the protagonists. The filmmakers stressed the importance of practical effects for their creatures.
Cohen tells us, “From the get-go, we said every creature is going to be practical. We were thinking of [David] Cronenberg, of Alien and The Thing, and we want our actors responding to real things, not a tennis ball. It always just looks better. You get better performances. With the designs themselves, if you look at the tarot cards and these specific characters, there’s nothing inherently terrifying about them, even though we associate the cards with being supernatural and terrifying. And [it’s] why we partnered with Trevor [Henderson], who was the only designer we met with. We were like, this is our guy because he has this ability to make the familiar feel unnatural.
“His designs are really grounded. I am sure you’ve seen a lot of his stuff where it’s like a hallway, and there’s something there, and something’s off about it, but it really feels like it’s in the space. We knew that he has a special brain for creating unique creatures, and he hadn’t done a movie, which is just shocking to us. Then, we knew that in order to pull that off, we would need a design team with equal skill. That was Dan Martin and his amazing team who worked hand in hand with Trevor to bring those to life.”
Larsen Thompson ‘Elise’ in Screen Gems TAROT
Great designs and practical effects are one thing, but it also falls to the performers to infuse these monsters with personality to make them memorable. That was also at the forefront of the filmmakers’ minds.
“In order for the creatures to translate, underneath all the prosthetics, you have to have great actors,” Cohen confirms. “We met with a lot of people. We were looking for people who were talking to us about the psychology and the movement and how they could move in a way that we hadn’t seen before or incorporate dance. We were looking for those outliers, and basically, everyone we hired approached the part as if there were no makeup or prosthetics. It’s like, ‘I am the Magician, so this is what I want to do. I’m going to have a limp. My body’s going to do this. I feel like my head is hunched.’ And we would watch these actors just embody these roles. It was really just picking great people, honestly. It’s hard to act through prosthetics and create emotion and fear and other things. You have to have an incredible control to be able to do that.”
Halberg elaborates,” Even though we enhanced some of the creatures with visual effects, we didn’t want to rely on that. So we needed people, like Spenser said, who each brought their own unique feel to these characters. They were just as important as all of the other actors in the movie and are so crucial to making sure that these sequences are scary and believable.”
Humberly González ‘Madeline’ in Screen Gems TAROT
One of the many Tarot creatures in the film is the Magician, who comes with an original song by the film’s composer, Joseph Bishara. While Bishara has delivered no shortage of great contemporary horror scores, including The Conjuring and Malignant, horror fans are likely more familiar with Bishara as the Lipstick Demon in the Insidious franchise. Cohen and Halberg can be counted among Insidious fans, so much so that they wanted an original song from the Lipstick Demon himself.
They explain, “We actually, in prep, we called Joe, and we said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do some kind of an old-timey song there.’ We knew something creepy, very Shining-esque. Then we had the idea to do a song called ‘I Saw You’ to be a pun on that whole thing. And actually use saws as the instrument. We found these YouTube videos, and our DP, I think, Elie [Smolkin] had found these videos of someone playing a saw. We were like, that’s terrifying.
“So we called Joe, and we said, ‘You know Tiptoe through the Tulips, how that’s like in Insidious?’ That’s the thing you leave the theater thinking about, and it gets under your skin. We were like, ‘Can you do that for us with an original song?’ He said yes. What you hear in the movie is basically what he played for us the first time. He was just like, ‘I have an idea. I’ll talk to you guys in a week.’ And then that was what we heard, and it was amazing.”
With so many entities and horror sequences, Halberg can’t pick a favorite. Instead, she offers one last tease, “I hope people come away with the realization that each of the sequences is so unique and different, and that each of the creatures is so special because we took a lot of time trying to craft each of these kills or scares to be their own thing and to feel different.
“Hopefully everybody can choose their own favorite.”
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