Hulu’s upcoming sci-fi horror No One Will Save You seems like it will utilize the plot of an unmade Steven Spielberg movie from decades ago. The Babysitter screenwriter Brain Duffield wrote and directed Hulu’s forthcoming sci-fi horror film. No One Will Save You combines a terrifying alien abduction storyline with a home invasion plot as a young woman living alone in her childhood home finds herself under attack from extraterrestrials. Kaitlyn Dever stars as Brynn, the movie’s agoraphobic lead character. If elements of this plot sound familiar, there might be a good reason for that.
The basic storyline of Hulu’s hotly anticipated No One Will Save You is shared by everything from Critters to Aliens in the Attic. However, this sci-fi horror seems like it will take a more serious approach to its proceedings. The premise also owes some creative debt to M. Night Shyamalan’s twisty movie Signs, but this isn’t the project from which No One Will Save You borrowed its central concept. The movie’s biggest inspiration is an unmade Spielberg project that shaped pop culture for decades, even though the movie was never filmed let alone finished.
No One Will Save You Recreates Spielberg’s Night Skies
No One Will Save You looks set to revisit the much-imitated premise of Night Skies, Spielberg’s famous unmade horror movie, as it follows a hero stranded in a lonely rural farmhouse who is besieged by alien home invaders. Night Skies would have been the first collaboration between The Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper and Spielberg, but the pair ended up working on 1982’s Poltergeist when Spielberg lost interest in Night Skies. Spielberg later split his Night Skies idea into two movies — one about a child befriending an alien and the other about a family haunted by inexplicable paranormal activity in their new home.
Both E.T. The Extra Terrestrial and Poltergeist were huge hits upon release, meaning the legacy of Spielberg’s unmade Night Skies was considerable, even though the film itself never entered production. The evidence of just how influential Night Skies was can be seen in the trailer for No One Will Save You, which borrows from Spielberg by showing aliens rampaging through a garden and UFOs standing in shadowy doorways. Fortunately for fans of sci-fi horror who have seen plenty of movies riff on this premise, No One Will Save You also offers a fresh spin on the story of Night Skies instead of replicating its plot wholesale.
How No One Will Save You Updates Night Skies
No One Will Save You’s heroine is a lonely homebody whereas Spielberg’s movie saw a whole family face off against invaders. The likely reasons for this change are twofold. First, the latter premise was already nailed by Signs, and second, a final girl heroine gives the movie more of a slasher feel. While No One Will Save You’s trailer promises a mashup of home invasion and alien invasion, the fact that Duffield wrote the subversive slasher comedy The Babysitter means the movie is likely to lean into that subgenre’s tropes, too. In doing so, No One Will Save You can effectively update Spielberg’s unmade sci-fi horror for 2023.
