No One Will Save You Director Talks Revisiting Classic Aliens, Good Studio Notes & More [Exclusive Interview]

I also wanted to talk about the sound design for the aliens because, man, it’s terrifying. It feels like there’s a little bit of “Predator” in there, but then their communication sounds are totally different. What was the collaboration like with your sound designer and pinpointing the sounds that they made?

Oh, great. Yeah, it was so great. I was specifically like, “no clicks,” because of “Predator.” So we developed this whole language. You can see a little bit in the movie, the alien’s hand, the Gray’s hand, it does this scan thing throughout the movie. Sometimes it’s obstructed, so it’s not super clear, but it’s doing that, and then the guys are like, “What if we had this radar sound with its finger?” So every time you hear that kind of thing, it’s its finger doing that. I was like, “That’s awesome.” It’s so great.

It was Chris Terhune and Will Files, who did our sound. They do all of Matt Reeves’ stuff. They’re just ridiculous. It was so great getting to be like, these aliens enter her house, and they’re not trying to be quiet. They’re openly talking to her the whole time, basically. They barely sneak around. They’re just “blah, blah, blah” at her. Being able to be like, “Okay, we need to have a language for these guys.” Then they need to have a specific sound that, if you hear it, you’re like, “Oh, that’s the sound from ‘No One Will Save You.'” Then it needs to happen enough times that Kaitlyn can recognize different little motifs and beats where she’s like, “Oh, they’re saying that again.”

It’s funny, one of the aliens has a whistle call, and it’s a little behind the scenes, but it’s doing the song Kaitlyn listens to [earlier in the movie], because it’s been outside of her house. It’s finishing the melody to her, because it just likes music. That was something we talked about, it was like, “Oh, these guys should think music’s really cool,” and be like, “Oh, people are always singing. She probably likes this song, so we could sing the song to her, because she would probably think that’s great.” Instead, it’s terrifying. I don’t know how many people clue in that it’s humming the song back to her. It was just fun to get to develop these guys where they’re like, “Music’s great, let’s just like, [singing] ‘ooh, ooh, ooh!'” It just felt really fun to build out this ecosystem.

Again, to what the studio was saying, they’re not evil. They really like music and they’re like, “She likes this song. Maybe this will help her understand we’re not all bad.” Instead, you’re like, this is the scariest thing that’s ever happened.

As I wrap up here, I wanted to touch upon the ending. It feels like the end of a “Twilight Zone” episode. It’s a little bit happy, a little bit twisted. I wonder if this is something that you still feel like you could dabble in this world and make a sequel for.

I am not the biggest sequel guy. I joked with Kaitlyn, maybe it’s every seven years, we’ll do our “Before Sunset” and we’ll save you. I could do a sequel. I have no plans to do a sequel. If enough people watched it on Hulu and everyone’s begging for it, we’ll talk. There’s not a franchise super plan in my head yet. It would take a lot of work then I’d be so stressed out that I have to come up with something.

“No One Will Save You” is available to stream on Hulu right now.