How Hulu's <i>No One Will Save You</i> Creates an Alien Invasion ...

In Hulu's new sci-fi thriller No One Will Save You, now streaming, Kaitlyn Dever spends nearly an hour and a half battling aliens—and barely says a word.

The Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated Dever stars as Brynn, a nervous homebody who's awoken one night by the sound of extraterrestrial beings breaking into her house. Brynn's fight to defend herself against the "Greys" gets going just minutes into movie, but as the film progresses, we learn through some dialogue-free interactions with her fellow townspeople that Brynn is harboring a traumatic secret.

"I had this idea for the character of Brynn. I knew all of that backstory and the life she lived, and I didn't really know what to do with it," writer-director Brian Duffield told Entertainment Weekly. "Then I had the idea of an alien movie. I got really into this idea that these invasions, these disasters happen to everybody, no matter what's going on in their life. In my brain, [the two plots] made sense together. Having someone barely equipped to deal with people [and] having to engage with this threat felt like a very fresh way into that story."

With the exception of a single line that Devers delivers at the climax of the film, No One Will Save You tells its story without anyone speaking aloud. The lack of dialogue was a narrative choice that Duffield said came about after he had already written a significant portion of the movie and realized that he hadn't yet had Brynn talk.

Read more: The 14 Most Anticipated Horror Movies of Fall 2023

"It was a character thing where this person really wants a community and doesn't think she's deserving of one. It felt like that device just amplified her character," he told EW. "Most of the movie there's not really a good reason for her to talk because she's trying so hard to not make a sound. She's not going to say, 'It's an alien in my house!' Also, when you have Kaitlyn Dever, she doesn't need to say anything. She can monologue with her eyes in a really impressive way."

The movie's speech-free shtick seems to be landing with viewers, some of whom have taken to X to praise the unique decision. "What an absolute class on filmmaking," one user wrote. "[No Now Will Save You is] a home-alone-girl horror movie. But, here, the masked killer is an alien from outer space. No dialogue in the entire film. And somehow completely riveting."

Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com.