''No One Gets Out Alive'' is a 2021 British
horror film
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.
Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...
directed by Santiago Menghini from a screenplay by Jon Croker and
Fernanda Coppel
Fernanda Coppel is a playwright and screenwriter. Her plays have been produced by Second Stage Theatre and the Atlantic Theater Company in New York. She has written for ''The Bridge (2013 TV series), The Bridge,'' ''Kingdom (2014 TV series), Kingd ...
, based on the 2014
novel of the same name by
Adam Nevill
Adam Nevill (also known as Adam LG Nevill) is an English writer of supernatural horror, known for his book ''The Ritual''. Prior to becoming a full-time author, Nevill worked as an editor.
After publishing several novels through Pan Macmillan ...
. It stars
Cristina Rodlo
Cristina Rodlo (born May 21, 1990) is a Mexican actress who appeared as Isabel Urrutia Zavaleta in 93 episodes of '' Vuelve Temprano'' (2016 – 2017) and 23 episodes of ''El Vato'' (2017). She has starred in feature films as Fabiana in '' Perd ...
and
Marc Menchaca
Marc Menchaca (born October 10, 1975) is an American actor, writer and director. He was co-director, co-writer, and lead actor of the 2013 Heartland Film Festival Award Winning movie ''This Is Where We Live'', and was awarded best actor at the ...
and was released on 29 September 2021 by
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
.
Plot
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 shows up and forces Ambar to drink some wine. As soon as he leaves, she locks her door. A while later, the two Romanian women who have also moved into the boarding house, knock on her door. They discuss their dreams about a stone box. Petra starts singing which puts Ambar to sleep.
Ambar wakes up to Red and Becker restraining the women and preparing them to be taken down to the basement. She attacks Red to try to stop him, but Becker throws her against the wall. Beto comes looking for Ambar but is assaulted by Becker. After Becker takes one of the women downstairs; Red tells Ambar that his dad was an
archeologist
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts ...
(as seen in the home movies at the start of the film) who brought back a stone box from his trip to
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
in 1963. Red's father, along with his mother, Mary, trapped and murdered women (the ghosts that Ambar has seen and heard throughout the house). After they killed their father for
sacrificing
Sacrifice is the offering of material possessions or the lives of animals or humans to a deity as an act of propitiation or worship. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly ex ...
their mother, 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. Ambar continues screaming and 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. In the dream, Ambar's mother is begging her to stay, and she begins to strangle Ambar. However, Ambar fights back and suffocates her mother instead. 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 retreat back into the box. Ambar comes out of the dream state to find herself standing by the alter alone.
Ambar hears Becker and Red preparing Petra for sacrifice. Becker notices his wounds are not healing and says somethings wrong. Ambar grabs a
macuahuitl
A macuahuitl () is a weapon, a wooden club with several embedded obsidian blades. The name is derived from the Nahuatl language and means "hand-wood". Its sides are embedded with prismatic blades traditionally made from obsidian. Obsidian is ...
from the study and goes upstairs, where she injures Red and is then attacked by Becker. Petra 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. Walking through the house, she passes Red, who has become a ghost like the other sacrificed women. As she starts to leave the house, her ankle, broken by Becker earlier, suddenly heals as a result of sacrificing Red to the monster. She stops and puts out her hand to let a moth land on it then turns back towards the basement door, showing the same darkened throbbing veins that Becker had.
Cast
*
Cristina Rodlo
Cristina Rodlo (born May 21, 1990) is a Mexican actress who appeared as Isabel Urrutia Zavaleta in 93 episodes of '' Vuelve Temprano'' (2016 – 2017) and 23 episodes of ''El Vato'' (2017). She has starred in feature films as Fabiana in '' Perd ...
as Ambar
*
Marc Menchaca
Marc Menchaca (born October 10, 1975) is an American actor, writer and director. He was co-director, co-writer, and lead actor of the 2013 Heartland Film Festival Award Winning movie ''This Is Where We Live'', and was awarded best actor at the ...
as Red
* David Figlioli as Becker
*
David Barrera
David Joel Barrera (born December 28, 1968) is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Gunnery Sgt. Ray 'Casey Kasem' Griego in ''Generation Kill''. He has appeared in television series including ''Grimm'', ''Heroes'', ''CSI: Miami'', ...
as Beto
* Moronkẹ Akinola as Kinsi
* Phil Robertson as Arthur Welles
* Joana Borja as Simona
*
Victoria Alcock
Victoria Alcock (born 13 May 1968) is a British actress.
Notable roles
Alcock played the prisoner Julie Saunders in all eight series of the television drama series, '' Bad Girls'' and Agnes Clarke in ''The House of Eliott''. In January 2012, Alco ...
as Mary
* Mitchell Mullen as Rilles
* Vala Noren as Freja
*
Alejandro Akara as Carlos
*
Jeff Mirza
Jeffrey Mirza (born 3 February 1964) is an English stand-up comedian and actor of British-Pakistani descent.
Early life
Mirza was born and brought up in East End of London, England to Pakistani parents. His family are from the Punjab region o ...
as Motel Manager
Reception
On the
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 67% based on 18 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10.
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
gave the film a weighted average score of 43 out of 100 based on 5 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
References
External links
*
* {{IMDb title, 13056008
2021 films
2021 horror films
2020s British films
2020s English-language films
British horror films
English-language Netflix original films
Films about illegal immigration to the United States
Films based on British horror novels
Films scored by Mark Korven
Films set in Cleveland