This indie comedy was one of the Pandemic’s many victims which is a bummer. Alamo Drafthouse would’ve treated Save Yourselves! really well, especially with the pre-show snipe, alien-invasion stories go back to HG Wells. I’m grateful Hulu got the streaming rights pretty quickly.
Su and Jack are stereotypical married Millenial Hipsters living in Brooklyn: they’re in their early thirties, they’re glued to their phones whenever possible, Jack loves to make sour dough bread, they have friends who are making movies, going on long hikes, etc. This is what the film establishes, not a judgment call on my part.
While attending a party, they run into an acquaintance that’s heading to Latin America and he offers the usage of his cabin in upstate New York. They readily accept because they’re both feeling burned out from their professions so this an opportunity to reconnect with each other and nature. One condition they agree on to make this vacation successful is turning off their phones once they hit the final leg of the journey.
A couple days pass happily. They take a hike. They go swimming in a nearby lake. They discuss having a child. They even enjoy watching an unusual amount of shooting stars in the night sky. But one morning they discover an empty whisky bottle with a weird hole in it and Jack’s sourdough starter missing. Su is then startled by this weird ball of fur in the house. It appears harmless until it suddenly bolts outside via a weird pink 10-foot appendage like a frog’s tongue. Given the odd incidents, they break their pact on technology to discover a slew of e-mails and voice messages from friends and family warning them about an invasion, aka these furballs.
Save kicks the dark humor into a higher gear by highlighting how Jack and Su have no survival skills. Like many of us, they’re urban dwellers dependent upon tech for living their daily lives. There’s no Daryl, the Rock or Captain McBadass coming to the rescue. They have to use their wits and the few resources around the cabin to make it to Jack’s family who have a boat to ride out the crisis; the furballs can’t swim. In short, Save is more realistic in how these disasters play out with subtle jokes along the way. It reminded me of how War of the Worlds goes as per the book, an unskilled narrator telling the events and not some crafty intuitive action hero resembling Tom Cruise saving the day.
Lastly, I’m not spoiling the ending yet I would like to hear your input on what you think is the earth’s fate when Save concludes.