Written by Robert Scucci | Published
The nature of my work on this site and elsewhere requires me to be online to view, write, research and publish content. The thought of throwing my phone into the furnace crosses my mind at least once a week. I hate the internet, and I hope one day I will have the courage to leave it forever. For now, I’m living hard among people who drown, quit their jobs, moved to the country, and live off the oil of the world. That was my goal when I shot the 2020s Save yourselves!an apocalyptic sci-fi comedy built around that location.
Technology controls our lives, and is designed to keep us distracted from finding our greater purpose when we enjoy the world through screens. What those who like to live off the grid don’t tell you is that sometimes you need a news alert from time to time to guide your life, especially if an alien invasion hits and you sleep through it because you were locked in a remote room trying to find them.
The Worst Week to Take a Soul-Searching Vacation
Save yourselves! tells the story of Su (Sunita Mani) and Jack (John Paul Reynolds), who are tired of the rat race. They both work in disposable technical jobs that may be underwritten by AI, and realize that they live to work instead of work to live. If they maintain the status quo, they will always be happy, never fully satisfied.
Deciding to go off the grid for a week, Su and Jack go to their friend Raph’s (Ben Sinclair) remote room. The rules are simple: phones off, no laptops, and total immersion in nature. They will chop wood, build fires, drink under the stars, and make homemade bread. It all sounds healthy, and on the first night anyway, it really is.
Their plans are foiled when they find a mysterious object in their hole that resembles a Hostess Sno Ball that is sentient and seems to appear and disappear at will. In a moment of weakness, Su checks her phone and discovers that these creatures are everywhere. They feed on ethanol and systematically bypass large metropolitan areas. To make matters worse, this animal, called a pouffe by Su, eats Jack’s sourdough, drinks all the whiskey, and gasses what he thinks is his only getaway car.
Aliens Are Fun, But They Point To A Bigger Problem
While the cute little pouffes do the damage Save yourselves!the big problem is how Jack and Su handle themselves. When they find a diesel truck hidden in a barn, Jack breaks down. He wanted to be a modern man, which meant avoiding learning useful skills like chopping wood, fixing water pipes, or driving clubs. He went into technology mainly so that he didn’t have to learn those things, he just realized that he’s not very good at technology.
Su, who once dated a stick driver, steps in and moves the truck. But the farther they get from the cabin, the more it becomes clear to them that the world as they know it is collapsing under the pouffe’s onslaught.
Ironically, their timing could not have been better. The technology they were trying to escape stopped working anyway, and they got exactly what they were looking for at the beginning of the film, in a very disturbing way. Save yourselves! it has a lot of fun with the idea of us being enslaved to our devices, and the true end of the world that begins when its characters pull the plug is a solid comedic frame that never feels preachy.
John Paul Reynolds and Sunita Mani are instantly likable as a couple who feel uncomfortable in life. Their willingness to improvise, such as closing bottles of wine in their moving car to distract the pouffes, makes for a delightful mess. Things get even more intense when they rescue a child they don’t know how to care for, forcing them to find it together in the middle of the apocalypse without going to YouTube university for a crash course in parenting.
Equal parts healthy and terrifying, Save yourselves! currently streaming for free on Tubi. If you want to check the same base using a more sensitive lens, Leave the World Behind is available to stream on Netflix.
