KWIF(+6): No One Will Save You (+3)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week (ha!) I have a spotlight movie which I write a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else I watched that week I do a quick little summary of my thoughts. This entry, however, is what I watched this week, as well as the two films I watched within the six weeks prior to this. I really stepped away from watching movies for a while, if for no other reason than I knew I wouldn't have time to do these write-ups. Nobody asks me to do these, yet for some reason they're a burden I carry. I'm grateful for Toasty to have a partner in crime with this weird obsession of recording our viewing habits in words.  It'd be easier and certainly much, much faster to have a podcast or a youtube channel where we get together for an hour and talk through our viewing habits, but then I think for both of us our comfort zone is writing, not talking. But I digress....

This week:
No One Will Save You (2023, Brian Duffield - Disney+)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023, Jeff Rowe - In Theatre)
Polite Society (2023, Nida Manzoor - AmazonPrime)
M3GAN (2023, Gerard Johnstone - AmazonPrime)

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If you've not heard of the new movie No One Will Save You, it's no surprise. It's a mid-budget alien invasion film with a big storytelling conceit that Hulu/Disney have decided to bury on their streaming services with no fanfare.  It is the type of film that could have had a mildly successful box-office run, but instead it seems like it might be the next victim to the black-hole-tax-dodge strategy of burying art and content that streaming services have decided is the way to stay afloat.

If you have heard of NOWSY, it's more than likely because you saw a review on youtube or saw it trending on Letterboxd (like me) than stumbled across it on Hulu/Disney. I have seen no promotion at all for this film.  Which is a shame, because a simple one minute, cleverly edited trailer would make this very enticing for someone, like myself, who likes sci-fi and aliens. It is a film chock full of great visuals that would lend themselves well to a trailer.

The film has to be very visual, because it is otherwise a largely dialogue-free film. There are less than ten audible words uttered in the entire run time. It is, indeed, a bit of a gimmick that is stressed at its seams. There are points in the film that, should logically have words said, but because of the conceit, there are none.  It's not a silent film, as there is plenty of noise, screams, heavy breathing, and even aliens talking in their own gutteral warble and in one scene a background din of indiscernible conversations.  It's both part of what makes the film stand out, but also what lessens its success. There is a stretching of disbelief happening when the character isn't, say, yelling at aliens or (the point that rubbed me the wrong way the most) saying something to the bus driver.

The plot of the film is pretty basic. Brynn (Kaitlyn Deever, Booksmart) is a young woman who lives alone in a remote house in a small town. She is into very 50's-ish kind of hobbies like dressmaking, big band records, two-step dancing, and she doesn't seem to partake much in modern conveniences like cel phones or television, and seems to only use the computer to sell her dresses online.  For reasons unknown at first, she both is reticent to go into town and is spurned by some of the people there.  She obviously has done something in her past to make her an outcast, but she's not seemingly old enough to have to pay for it in the way that she is.  This is the thread the entire character is built on... the "what did she do" question... and what the alien invasion, which starts very, very quickly, seems somehow tied into.

The story weaves in and out of Brynn's fight for survival as, at first, one alien comes to her homestead. After surviving the night, she must brave her other fears and head into town for help, but she learns immediately things are even more dire, and that it's not just about her. More aliens, more threats... and it's this constant danger-at-every-turn aspect of the film that works best. 

The alien design is basically the most popular variations of the "grays", the lanky, scrawny, big tear-drop headed, black eye, slit-mouthed, gaunt creatures popularized since the post Roswell.  The first version we see is the standard humanoid, but later we see the diminutive primal version, with short legs and long arms, kind of monkey-like, and then the spider-ish versions with limbs that look like daddy long-legs.  They all look great.  The UFOs are well done and have an unknowable sensibility to them.  Yes, they can look like a conventional flying disc, but how they manoeuvre and their capabilities are kind of mind blowing.  The alien invasion is incredibly well done.

But Brynn's story arc is a let down. There were many angles that the film could have taken this to tie in the invasion to Brynn's past, but it's not at all, and so there is a sense of disconnect in how neatly this film could have fit together. The end of the film is probably its lowest point, making an unclear statement about both our characters' morals and the film's ultimate point.

I suspect the wordless storytelling conceit is what the "purple suits" (as Toasty likes to call studio execs) got nervous about and stopped them from releasing this theatrically.  I realize there's an expense to putting movies out into cinema, but dumping them to streaming is so lazy and unadventurous. The purple suits are so risk averse these days, to the point that they would rather take what had the potential for a sleeper hit, and essentially dispose of it.  It is not the most successful film in terms of character story, but it does deliver an exciting survival tale that probably would have had some mass appeal.  But what do I know.

(But is it horror? - maybe a little scary for younger audiences, but not really)

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Though I am a child of the 80's, someone who loves comic books, toys, and cartoons, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were never my thing. But as a comic/toy/cartoon lover, I've always stuck a toe into every iteration of TMNT, always stayed a little bit aware as to what was happening with them.  Even still, I've never been entirely enamoured with the property.  Whatever its legion of multi-generational followers see in it, I've just never really been able to get too excited about or too invested in.  The two peaks of interest for me would have been the original 1990 TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan Game Boy cartridge and then the 2012 Nickelodeon TMNT series that my kid really got into when they were about 4.  They were fun, but never inspired any real devotion in me.

When I saw the first trailer for Mutant Mayhem, the newest iteration of TMNT coming from the pen of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, I thought "this may be it, this may be the one". The trailer showed off a visual design that (finally) was showing the influence Into the Spider-Verse has had on the animation industry, finally breaking the choke hold of bloopy, soft-edged, big-headed animation that has dominated North American mainstream since the Pixar era began. It's a design that recalls the old four-colour separation of comics, as well as the outside-the-lines spraypaint aesthetic of street art, and it's really quite attractive, especially when put against a sea of same-old-same-old designs.  The trailer was also funny, which I would expect nothing less from a Rogen-Goldberg product. And, over the trailer, played A Tribe Called Quest's "Can I Kick It" which is an all-time favourite of mine.  I had had high hopes.

I've lived through at least a dozen iterations of TMNT and, well, this is another one. The voice cast is great, the tweaks to the team dynamic is very welcome (they are very, very brotherly, and also very teenager-y), the spin on the rogues gallery was surprising, there were some good laugh lines, some solid action (a lot of Jackie Chan-inspired fighting, apt given that Chan is voicing Splinter), and, yeah, a dad-rap soundtrack that seemed pulled from a playlist from my 1st generation iPod.  I did enjoy the film. Truly. But whatever it is about the Turtles that doesn't inspire my devotion is still not present in this iteration.  

The film is a swift 100 minutes, and is genuinely interested in the Turtles, April and Splinter as characters, but it doesn't really know what to do about its plot. The story is mostly about the Turtles wanting to be a part of the surface world, to have a real teenage life, and how Splinter is such a fearful helicopter parent that it keeps them hesitant and feeling alone (despite having each other).  But the conflict, the "Superfly" and his gang of mutants, their objectives, and how they're integrated into the film seems a bit undercooked (I have to wonder if the film was edited down as it seems like there should be more to it all). 

I'm not eagerly awaiting or excited about whatever's next for this TMNT run (another cartoon series and a second movie planned, I believe) and it's unlikely I'll pay much attention to it until it's in my face.

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I haven't seen Nida Manzoor's We Are Lady Parts, the 2021 British comedy series about an all-female muslim punk band, but I've heard it's wonderful and it's been on the list for a while. When Manzoor's Polite Society was in select theatres earlier this summer, from poster and description alone, I made note of it but didn't manage to catch it on the big screen (I bailed on seeing it twice...too much dividing my attention).  

When it popped up on streaming, it became the only "must watch" of my "gap month".  I have this nasty habit of getting excited about watching things immediately, but if I don't my enthusiasm wanes. So I made a point of putting this film on and had an absolute blast with it.

Ria Khan (the inviting Priya Kansara, Bridgerton) is a high school student in London with a devotion to becoming a stunt woman. She practices martial arts and, with the help of Lena (Ritu Arya, Umbrella Academy), her art-school dropout sister, she makes stunt videos she posts on youtube. Her teachers, counsellors, and parents don't have any faith in the path she's on but she's fixated, passionate, and dreams of nothing more. But when Lena catches the eye of the most in-demand looking-for-a-wife single at an Eid celebration, Ria's focus becomes more and more fixated on getting in the way of whatever is happening there, seeing malice in Lena falling in love and abandoning her artistic passions.

Given the description, you're probably not expecting a lot of kung-fu and supervillainy, but that's exactly what you find in this film. It's a film that's stylish in a pop-art kind of way, with a thumping spaghetti western-meets-Bollywood soundtrack that constantly sets and resets the scene.  It's light on its feet and full of sly British humour.  It's never taking itself too seriously from a production standpoint, but it grounds itself fully in Ria's obsessions and delusions and everything in between.  It's kind of fluffy, a little weird, but supremely entertaining.

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I missed out on 2023's first big breakout success, and by the time M3GAN hit streaming I had already heard enough about it that I didn't feel I was missing anything. But knowing what happens in a film and experiencing a film I'm keenly aware are two very different things (I'm frequently having to tell my kids this, who experience cinema primarily via youtube breakdowns/teardowns).  Plus, I've started to consider that James Wan just might have the sensibilities as a storyteller (here with a co-story credit) that I really key into.

I freaking loved M3GAN. It's totally predictable, and yet somehow that predictability is absolutely thrilling.  Everything that happens, you want to happen, because the film sets you up for it to happen. 

The chief complaint about M3GAN - the story of the world's most advanced robotic companion doll who gains its own sense of independence and goes on a killing spree - is that it's not gory enough, that it doesn't show you M3GAN's kills, just maybe the bloody aftermath. I'm not a horror and gore aficionado, but it feels like forever since we've had a film like this that can be a tween's entry point into horror, because it's not really a horror movie. It's more a monster adventure akin to Gremlins or Tremors than it is to A Nightmare on Elm Street or Candyman.  

Johnstone's direction has a real polish to it, a sense that he knew exactly what tone the screenplay (from Akela Cooper) was taking, and his collaborators on light, sound, art design and all around new exactly what to deliver.  There's some very striking imagery in the film, but Johnstone never stops for too long to pat him and his team on the back. There's a focussed A-to-B-to-C path here and it's delightful. 

M3GAN has become an instant icon, and now I understand why. 

(But is it horror? - Yes, it's junior level, or entry-level horror, fun for the whole family)

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