It’s no masterpiece, but indie comedy Save Yourselves! (2020) is an earnest, amusing film with appealing leads and a timely theme. Su (Sunita Mani) and Jack (John Reynolds) are a loving but aimless Brooklyn couple who live and work online. When a friend offers them the use of his isolated upstate house to get away from the city for a vacation, they make a pact to go off email and the internet for a week to clear their heads and work on themselves. Unfortunately, this puts them out of touch with civilization just as the world is being invaded by fluffy but lethal alien creatures.
It’s not quite riotously funny, but Save Yourselves! is light and entertaining thanks to Mani and Reynolds, whose comic chemistry is strong as they mutually confront the hopeless internet dependency that provides the film’s central social commentary. Their crisis builds with clever subtlety, reminding me a little of Shaun of the Dead in the way the science fictional plot beats emerge, playing out casually behind the couple’s personal story. Alas, it resorts to an abrupt non-ending when it runs out of things to say, but at least those things are well articulated, poking semi-serious fun at the way modern civilization has stripped us of basic survival skills. A fun, solid little film.
