No One Gets Out Alive is a 2021 British horror film directed by Santiago Menghini from a screenplay by Jon Croker and Fernanda Coppel, based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Adam Nevill. It stars Cristina Rodlo and Marc Menchaca and was released on 29 September 2021 by Netflix.[1][2]
No One Gets Out Alive | |
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![]() Official release poster | |
Directed by | Santiago Menghini |
Screenplay by |
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Story by | Jon Croker |
Based on | No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Nevill |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | Stephen Murphy |
Edited by | Mark Towns |
Music by | Mark Korven |
Production company | The Imaginarium |
Distributed by | Netflix |
Release date |
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Running time | 87 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Ambar, an undocumented immigrant, moves from Mexico to Cleveland after her mother passes away. She supports herself with an under the table job and her savings. In search of a place to stay, she finds a dilapidated boarding house run by Red, who requires the first month's rent up front. After she moves in, strange things start happening to her there and elsewhere. One night she sees a man banging his head against the door, whom she later learns is Red's mentally disturbed brother, Becker. Some rooms in the house are filled with strange artifacts, including depictions of ritual sacrifice. Ambar begins to see ghostly figures around the house.
In search of a better job, she gives a co-worker the remainder of her savings to obtain a fake ID that proclaims her a U.S. citizen, but the co-worker steals the money and disappears. When Ambar insists her boss give her the co-worker's address, he fires her.
Frightened by supernatural visions, Ambar flees the boarding house. Desperate for money and unable to receive help from her distant cousin, Beto, Ambar is forced to call Red. They meet at a nearby diner and Red promises to refund her deposit, but only if she returns to the house as he claims to not have the cash on him. When they arrive at the boarding house, the cash is not in her room as promised. Instead, Becker locks Ambar in her room along with two Romanian women who have also moved into the boarding house. The two women start singing a lullaby which prompts Ambar to sleep.
Red and Becker restrain the women and prepare them to be taken down to the basement. Beto comes looking for Ambar but is assaulted by Becker. After Becker takes one of the other women downstairs; Red tells Ambar that his dad was an archeologist (as seen in the home movies at the start of the film) who brought back a stone box from his trip to Mexico in 1963. Something about the box led Red's father, along with his mother, Mary, to trap and murder women (the ghosts that Ambar has seen and heard throughout the house). Discovering what they had done, Red wanted to leave but Becker insisted on staying, as each woman sacrificed to the stone box improved Becker's health.
Becker returns and carries the screaming Ambar to the basement, where she sees the other woman has been decapitated. He ties Ambar to a stone slab in front of an altar where the box sits, opens the box and leaves the room, shutting the door behind him. It seems that Ambar is doomed, until Beto bursts into the room and unties her.
As they attempt to escape the basement, Ambar is caught up in a dream of her mother on her deathbed. At the same time, a large moth-like creature slowly emerges from the box and takes Ambar's head between its hands to read her mind and learn what Ambar has sacrificed. In the dream, Ambar strangles her mother, whose eyes and hands have morphed into those of the creature. This causes the monster, the Aztec goddess Ītzpāpālōtl (God of Paradise made possible through sacrifice), associated with the moth seen throughout the film (Rothschildia erycina), to accept the sacrifice and retreat into the box.
Ambar hears Becker and Red preparing the last girl for sacrifice. Becker notices his wounds are not healing, and says, "Something's different." Ambar grabs a macuahuitl from the study and goes upstairs, where she injures Red and is then attacked by Becker. The Romanian woman tries to help but is thrown over the balcony and killed. Becker chokes Ambar, but she slices his carotid artery with an obsidian blade from the macuahuitl, then smashes his head with it. She hears Red, wounded but alive, shuffling around in the next room. She brings him downstairs, ties him onto the stone table, and watches the monster bite off his head. As she is leaving the house, her ankle, broken by Becker earlier, suddenly heals as a result of sacrificing Red to the monster. Walking through the house, she passes Red, who has become a ghost like the other sacrificed women.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 67% based on 18 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10.[3] Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 43 out of 100 based on 5 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[4]