The R-Rated Sci-Fi Comedy That’s A Perfect, Puffy Alien Invasion

By Robert Scucci
| Published 1 hour ago

The nature of my work on this site and elsewhere requires me to be chronically online in order to watch, write, research, and publish content. The idea of throwing my phone into an incinerator crosses my mind at least once a week. I hate the internet, and I hope to one day be brave enough to leave it forever. In the meantime, I live vicariously through people who take the plunge, quit their jobs, move to the country, and live off the fat of the land. That was my exact intention when firing up 2020’s Save Yourselves!, an apocalyptic sci-fi comedy built around that very premise.

Technology rules our lives, and it’s designed to keep us distracted from finding our greatest purpose if we only experience the world through screens. What those who romanticize off-grid living don’t tell you is that sometimes you actually need the occasional news alert to navigate your life, especially when an alien invasion is underway and you slept through it because you were holed up in a remote cabin trying to find yourself.

The Worst Week To Take A Soul-Searching Vacation 

Save Yourselves! tells the story of Su (Sunita Mani) and Jack (John Paul Reynolds), who have grown tired of the rat race. They both work disposable tech jobs that will likely be overwritten by AI, and they realize they’re living to work instead of working to live. If they keep maintaining the status quo, they’ll always be halfway happy, never fully satisfied.

Resolving to go off-grid for a week, Su and Jack head to their friend Raph’s (Ben Sinclair) remote cabin. The rules are simple: phones off, no laptops, and total immersion in nature. They’ll kayak, chop wood, build fires, drink under the stars, and make homemade bread. It all sounds wholesome, and for the first night or so, it actually is.

Their plans unravel when they discover a fuzzy object in their den that looks like a sentient Hostess Sno Ball and seems to appear and disappear at will. In a moment of weakness, Su checks her phone and learns that these creatures are everywhere. They feed off ethanol and are systematically overtaking major metropolitan areas. To make matters worse, the creature, dubbed a pouffe by Su, eats Jack’s sourdough starter, drinks all the whiskey, and siphons the gas from what they think is their only getaway vehicle.

The Aliens Are Fun, But Point To A Much Larger Problem

While the cute little pouffes wreak havoc in Save Yourselves!, the bigger issue is how Jack and Su handle themselves. When they find a diesel-fueled vehicle hidden in the barn, Jack breaks down. He wanted to be a modern man, which in his mind meant avoiding learning practical skills like chopping wood, fixing plumbing, or driving a stick shift. He got into tech specifically so he wouldn’t have to learn those things, only to realize he’s not particularly good at tech either.

Su, who once dated someone who drove a stick, steps in and gets the truck moving. But the farther they get from the cabin, the more it dawns on them that the world as they know it is collapsing under the pouffe invasion.

Ironically, their timing couldn’t have been better. The technologies they were trying to escape stopped working anyway, and they get exactly what they wanted at the start of the film, just in the most inconvenient way possible. Save Yourselves! has a lot of fun with the idea that we’re enslaved to our devices, and the literal end of the world kicking off the moment its protagonists unplug is a strong comedic framework that never feels preachy.

John Paul Reynolds and Sunita Mani are instantly likable as a couple who feel unmoored in life. Their willingness to improvise, like lobbing wine bottles from their moving vehicle to distract the pouffes, makes for consistently entertaining chaos. Things escalate further when they rescue a baby they have no idea how to care for, forcing them to figure it out together in the middle of an apocalypse without attending YouTube university for a crash course on parenting.

Equal parts wholesome and horrifying, Save Yourselves! is currently streaming for free on Tubi. If you want to explore a similar premise through a more serious lens, Leave the World Behind is available for streaming on Netflix.