Save Yourselves! (2020)

Save Yourselves! review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Save Yourselves is a film that is mostly a one-joke picture albeit delivered with an eerie earnest throughout. Taking place during an alien invasion, a millennial couple tries to detach from the world and improve their relationship, only to come to the cold conclusion that they’re not well-equipped to handle the world outside their technology. On that basis, the film doesn’t really sound appealing, considering it’s the boomer’s wish to watch young people flail without their progressive ideals and technological bubbles to protect them. Thankfully, the movie focuses more on the quirky nature of a couple trying to repair their relationship than the easy boomer-humor or even the alien invasion (which this indie comedy clearly didn’t have the budget to showcase).

The two characters of Su and Jack are established as an average millennial couple. They spend their afternoons on the couch scrolling through their phones and listening to podcasts. They’ve become so used to such a lifestyle that the most catastrophic thing that seems to happen to them during the day is that one of them closed all their browser tabs. Trying to keep up with progressive trends, their relationship is just as much a struggle as it is to know what’s morally and environmentally astute, a desire that feels unmet in their mass consumption of media.

Deciding to take a new perspective on their marriage, they plan to get away from it all with a trip out to the country. No phones, no computers, and no television. It’s a chance to connect without a digital connection, where they can take in nature during the day and get drunk at night. Of course, they’ve become a bit addicted, and fighting off those urges for turning on the phone can be hard. It’s even harder when the world is ending.

As with a lot of indie comedies with sci-fi twists, Su and Jack attempt to rekindle their marriage while the world burns. The aliens attacking Earth are slowly revealed to be furry balls, identified by the couple as poufs. They’re essentially the Tribbles from Star Trek except they have tentacles that can attack and kill people. They also thrive on ethanol to survive, making cars tasty targets for food. The aliens are not established as mysterious beings with a plan but just jerks who’ve come to Earth to eat it. This is most evident in a scene where one alien ditches the couple but not before farting in their faces.

The two leads of Sunita Mani and John Paul Reynolds spend much more time trying to connect and understand themselves than getting lost in the alien invasion plot. This is the biggest strength of the film in that the aliens are not all that interesting, nor are their mechanics. What’s far more intriguing is just how they try to become more honest and open with each other. Sometimes it’s refreshing to watch them admit they don’t quite feel right in their structured methodologies. Other times, however, it borders a bit too much on appeasing the boomer image of the millennial, that they’re not capable of any skills when the chips are down. While the film does attempt to redeem them, they still continue to make mistakes right up to the climax which carries an uneasy resolve about everyone being in their own little bubble.

For being a comedy of the floundering couple as the world ends, it’s not half bad for providing no easy routes and no easy resolution for the characters. They flail and bicker, hoping to find some meaning in the world even when it seems so hard with all the clutter and pressures of being a better person. The satire is suitable enough to say something meaningful without being overtly condescending to a generation that finds itself with no future. That’s pretty par for the course as far as indie comedies go but it’s refreshing that there’s a more nuanced take still present in movies than the usual kids-these-days approach to millennials being fish out of water.