Save Yourselves!

Save Yourselves! is a science fiction comedy film written and directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson,[3] and starring Sunita Mani and John Paul Reynolds. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.[4] It was released on October 2, 2020,[5] by Bleecker Street.[6]

Save Yourselves!
Official poster
Directed by
  • Alex Huston Fischer
  • Eleanor Wilson
Produced by
Written by
  • Alex Huston Fischer
  • Eleanor Wilson
Starring
Music byAndrew Orkin
CinematographyMatt Clegg
Edited bySofi Marshall
Production
companies
Distributed byBleecker Street
Release date
  • January 25, 2020 (2020-01-25) (Sundance)
  • October 2, 2020 (2020-10-02) (United States)
Running time
93 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$301,162[1][2]

Plot

A prologue states that this was the year the Earth was lost. A 30-something Millennial couple, Su and Jack, decide to "disconnect" from their internet-obsessed and superficial lives in Brooklyn by turning off their phones for a weekend and staying at friend's cabin in the woods. As they drive away, objects begin descending from the sky. At the cabin, the couple reconnect with one another, discussing various ways to "become better people", such as by baking bread, going vegetarian, or starting a community garden. During their stay, Jack notices a strange fuzzy ball-like object sitting in the den, which Su calls a pouffe (which she later says is the name of a kind of foot-rest like an ottoman) and asks Su if it was there when they arrived, but Su ignores it and attempts to have Jack do several exercises she wrote down from an online list to help them become closer and more motivated as a couple and as adults. This irritates Jack and the two fight, causing Jack to go outside to chop wood.

Angry at Jack, Su secretly turns on her phone and listens to several strange voicemails from her mother about giant rats that consume ethanol infesting New York. Before she can listen further, Jack returns, and Su quickly hides her phone. Jack admits to Su that he feels inadequate as an man, but is committed to them becoming closer. The couple make up, but in the morning, they realize his sourdough starter and their whiskey bottle are empty and that the fuzzy ball, has moved. Realizing the starter and the whiskey contain ethanol, Su recalls her mother's voicemails and admits to Jack that she broke their disconnecting agreement, but that she thinks the voicemails may be related to what's going on. The two hide upstairs and turn on their phones, finding they've lost signal but learning from various belated voicemails and texts already on her phone from the day before that the pouffes are alien invaders that have attacked New York, forcing a mass evacuation, and that the pouffes feed on ethanol.

They attempt to pick up the pouffe with fireplace tongs, but it flees shoots out a long tendril that sticks to the doorframe, pulling itself along and shooting it out again as its form of locomotion to flee. Stunned, the couple then make a plan to escape in their car back to the city in hopes of regaining signal and more information about the invasion. However, they find that the pouffes have pierced the tank to feed on the gasoline, which by Federal mandate contains ten percent corn-based ethanol, and are forced to use the range rover, which has not been drained and later is noted to run on diesel. They struggle to use the stick shift at first. Driving through the woods, they witness a stranded couple get killed by another pouffe, but throw a bottle of wine off the road as a distraction to lead it away. As they pass, they discover a baby in the couple's stranded truck. Deciding that they cannot abandon it, they gather it up, but a woman emerges from the truck’s bed and steals their vehicle at gunpoint, leaving them with the baby.

With no other options, they take the supplies in the abandoned car and head into the woods. Su becomes despondent, worried about her family and lamenting that they have no life skills to survive the invasion, or to offer in any future society in the wake of the discovery of alien life. They then both become extremely intoxicated, perhaps from a gas they'd inhaled from a pouffe earlier, and are about to collapse, perhaps die, when Su injects them both with epinephrine from their kit, allowing them to recover. As they are hallucinating, the baby crawls away.

After panicking and searching, they discover the baby with a pouffe sitting just behind it. Jack blocks it from attacking Su with his own body. It shoots its proboscis at Jack but somehow fails to kill him. Its proboscis becomes stuck in the baby harness Jack is wearing. Su grabs a knife and cuts off the proboscis, which kills the pouffe. Jack finds he is unharmed because his cell phone in his shirt pocket protected his heart. Each touched by the other's willingness to protect them, Jack and Su climb to the lookout point along the trail with the baby, and marvel at how they feel more mature and in love compared to how they were when they arrived at the cabin. They commit to marrying one another and intend to raise the baby as their own in the woods, achieving the next steps of their adulthood.

Su notices a strange translucent structure growing out of the ground nearby and investigates. She describes it as some sort of forcefield and Jack examines it as well. The two then discover that their phones have mysteriously regained signal and immediately check them for information. They become so absorbed in the various videos and content on their phones that they fail to realize the "forcefield" has enveloped them in an egg-shaped bubble. Unable to break through, they and the baby are carried upwards through the sky. As it climbs higher, the bubble begins releasing oxygen for them. As they break out of the Earth's atmosphere, they notice other bubbles carrying people like them. Unable to determine what this means, they initially laugh and ask if this means they have been saved, but their faces become uncertain, floating away into space as the credits roll.

Cast

Release

The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2020.[7][8] Shortly after, Bleecker Street acquired distribution rights to the film.[9] It was released on October 2, 2020, and is available on Hulu.

Critical reception

Save Yourselves holds a Certified Fresh 88% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 14 reviews, with a weighted average of 6.86/10.[10] Stephanie Zacharek from Time (magazine) praised the film, saying, "It takes itself just seriously enough, but not too seriously." [11]

References
  1. "Save Yourselves! (2020)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved October 23, 2020.
  2. "Save Yourselves! (2020) - Financial Information". The Numbers. Retrieved October 23, 2020.
  3. Lussier, Germaine (January 21, 2020). "21 Intriguing Sundance Movies That Could Become 2020's Sleeper Genre Hits". Gizmodo. Retrieved January 21, 2020.
  4. "Sundance announces 2020 Screenwriters Lab participants". Park Record. December 27, 2019. Retrieved January 21, 2020.
  5. Rotten Tomatoes — Save Yourselves!
  6. "Save Yourselves!". Bleecker Street. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  7. Siegel, Tatiana (December 4, 2019). "Sundance Unveils Female-Powered Lineup Featuring Taylor Swift, Gloria Steinem, Abortion Road Trip Drama". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  8. "Save Yourselves!". Sundance Film Festival. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  9. D'Alessandro, Anthony (February 13, 2020). "'Save Yourselves!' Alien Sci-Fi Comedy Nabbed By Bleecker Street After Sundance Bow". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  10. "Save Yourselves! (2020)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved October 27, 2020.
  11. "Save Yourselves! Is an Engaging, Timely Sci-Fi Comedy About the Need to Unplug". TIME Magazine. Retrieved October 27, 2020.
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