No One Gets Out Alive
Directed by Santiago Menghini
★★★½
NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE. Cristina Rodlo as Ambar, Victoria Alcock as Mary, in NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix
No One Gets Out Alive is a meta social commentary wrapped up in very traditional horror film leanings. The new Netflix film highlights the struggles and horrors undocumented immigrants experience trying to carve out a living in the United States.
Ambar (Cristina Rodlo) , is an undocumented immigrant living in a derelict apartment building that is specifically designed to provide a place to live for undocumented immigrants, while exploiting their compromised and vulnerable situations. She rents a room from a white American man, named Red ((Marc Menchaca), who immediately comes off as brusque and having no altruism in renting out this space to immigrants in a bad situation. The coming together of these two characters is what sets the stage for the allegory of the film: how the system in the United States can so easily consume those trying to find a better life.
The social commentary can be somewhat heavy handed at times, and is a bit too on-the-nose for the first act. The film throws us into this intriguing story of struggle and poverty from a desperate person and intersperses some scares in between. However, the second act is when the horror shift really starts to take hold, providing revelations about missing persons from the apartment building in addition to some mysteries surrounding Red and his brother behind the curtains. Finally, we get a really solid thriller-style film with some exciting moments of tension. Until the third act, where the film dives into the deep end of horror, giving us a lot of reveals about the mysteries raised in the first two acts, some decently creepy and scary haunted house type segments, and finally the reveal of the “big bad,” which genuinely took me by surprise (and that is coming from someone that watches way too much horror).
No One Gets Out Alive isn’t perfect and won’t be on many “best of the year” lists, but, overall, it’s solid and a really good time. Nice tension, decent scares, believable gore, good buildup, throw in some topical social commentary, and you’ve got No One Gets Out Alive. On a scale of Nope to Dope, this is a Dope from me!