No One Will Save You Director Brian Duffield reveals the one studio note he received that improved the movie. Released on Hulu this past weekend, the alien invasion thriller has earned rave reviews from audiences and critics alike. The movie stars Kaitlyn Dever as Brynn, a lonely woman who must defend herself after her house is besieged by aliens.
In a recent interview with Slash Film breaking down the No One Will Save You ending and other aspects of the film, Duffield explains how 20th Century Studios gave him one note that ended up making the film better. Check out Duffield’s explanation below:
“Oh, 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. We have some UFO shots, even big wides, and they were like, ‘We have in our post-[production VFX] bids, we have the UFO blowing up something in the background.’ 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.’ That was something that was really fun, especially in the third act of the movie.
“They danced this line, and they’re right — if they ever tipped over to evil, some of the plot developments wouldn’t make sense. It’s a really cool thing. I think most other places would’ve been like, ‘Yeah, they should be nuking cities.’ At one point, they were like, ‘Oh, they should put out that fire.’ I was like, ‘That’s really funny.’ They had a whole — 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.’”
More to come…
