No One Will Save You, 2023 - ★★½
You know the taste of a well-done steak left on the grill a bit too long? They add more spices in, some more exotic than others, to make it interesting, but really what it does is to try to compensate for the somewhat burned flavor.
This is not a bad movie. I've seen some horrific movies, and not in the fun Halloween way. It's entertaining and good to watch with a friend - or a few even - with a drink, which is fine. It's fine.
It's just not the kind of movie that fucks with your head. It doesn't have the ability to do so. It starts with familiar tropes, and you can guess what happens quite easily all the way to the end.
To her defense, Dever delivers a good performance. I bet she'd have a couple of good things to say if only the movie would let her (the film is almost 100% speech-free, for "reasons.") the quality of the effects is also alright, but in this day and age when nearly every horny 20 year old can create deepfakes of their most disturbed fantasies, I don't think it's much of an achievement.
The main issue of this film is the plot. It's there, somewhere, a basic and familiar one we've seen before, and it could work well. The film's trying to do this little dance of "maybe it's all in her head?" But it's clumsy, and it gets stepped over by the special effects. Speaking of those - the aliens (it says there are aliens in the description, so I'm not spoiling anything, right?) are a bad joke of monsters you get in horror films. You can't tell if they're messing around or really are that dumb because if they are, how in the world (or Mars, or whatever) can they fly those spaceships?
You want a pizza night with a drink and a couple of friends? This is it. You want good psychological horror to keep you up at night, second-guessing your life? Move on, this ain't it.