An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at 2021’s Netflix exclusive No One Gets Out Alive based on Adam Nevill’s 2014 book of the same name.
After arriving to Cleveland from Mexico, Ambar (Cristina Roldo) takes a room at a boarding house where she’s haunted by various ghosts.
Is it Scary?
Nah, there are a few jump scares that don’t feel cheap but the overall atmosphere of the movie never reaches a nail-biting level. No One Gets Out Alive almost reaches a slow-burn level of horror but the quick pace of other aspects in the story prevents that from happening. Also despite being Rated R, the movie feels more like PG-13 until the last 15 minutes.
You might be jumping a bit at the beginning but overall you won’t leave the movie scared unless you recently moved into a random boarding house in Cleveland.
Detailed Plot:
The movie opens with an old silent film depicting several explorers finding a temple in Mexico, 1963. Inside, the explorers find walls lined with hundreds of skulls and before finding several skeletons missing their heads.
So we know exactly where their skulls went.
As they dig further, they find a large stone box and pull it out of a hole. The film ends and we cut to the present.
In a pretty old-looking apartment building a woman is on the phone telling a relative about her recent bad dreams. She appears to regret leaving home as it caused a divide with her father.
After admitting she was wrong to leave, she notices footprints on the wooden floor by her window when her power goes out. As the footprints disappear, there’s a sound of something dragging along the floor in the kitchen. The woman looks down her hall and sees the large stone box from the 1963 film.
Unbeknownst to her, someone suddenly appears behind her in the shadows. The box jerks a few inches down the hall as the woman continues staring instead of doing literally anything else. In a jump scare, hands grab the woman and we cut to the outside of the building as her screams echo out into the night.
Title screen!
We cut to a truck in Cleveland, Ohio opening at night with multiple people inside having just arrived illegally from Mexico; one of them is our main character Ambar (played by Cristina Rodlo).
We fast forward to two weeks later and she is having trouble keeping her apartment as her landlord wants her to give him ID. At her job at a textile factory, Ambar finds a paper advertising a boarding house offering cheap rooms.
Ambar travels to the boarding house and meets it’s owner, Red (played by Marc Menchaca). Taking her up to her room, we see the place ain’t exactly a 5-star hotel as her bed breaks the moment she puts her bag on it. Also it’s the same place from the start of the movie so “dun dun dunn!”
After “fixing” the bed by placing a box under it, Red tells her they just recently bought the house and are in the process of fixing it up. Realizing that she is there illegally and after asking if her job pays cash, Red tells her she has to pay a month of rent upfront.
That night Ambar listens to an old voicemail her mother left her that thanks her for visiting despite having plans. Before the voicemail ends, Ambar is interrupted by the sounds of someone crying. She looks through a floor vent and sees a woman crying in the floor below her. Since Red told Ambar earlier there’s only one other woman named Freja renting a room in the house, this must be her.
In a smart decision for a horror movie, Ambar follows the rule of “mind your own damn business” because, moments later, we see her in bed looking at pictures of her mom. In a flashback we see Ambar’s mom in a hospital bed with Ambar by her side. Her mother asks her to stay longer and, though Ambar immediately says yes, we do see some hesitancy on her face.
From the flashback and the voicemail we can figure out that Ambar put her life on hold during her mother’s illness and has some regrets about it. The next day as Ambar leaves for work she finds a bluish powder on her doorknob but doesn’t think much of it.
Heading down the steps she bumps into Freja (played by Vala Noren) and introduces herself. Interestingly, after Ambar tells her that Red said they were the only two renting rooms, Freja says Red is full of shit and walks away. Feels like she could have elaborated on that but in horror movies you have to ask highly specific questions to get the right answers.
At work, we find out Ambar’s friend and co-worker Kinsi (played by Moronke Akinola) has a contact that is setting Ambar up with forged paperwork and documentation. Unfortunately since Ambar insists the paperwork and ID state she is from Texas the price has gone up from one thousand to three thousand. Since she has no other money, she decides she’ll ask Red for her deposit back.
Later, Ambar is visiting her cousin Beto (played by David Barrera), who has invited her over his home for dinner. We learn, from this little exposition scene, that Beto is pretty successful and has set up a job interview for Ambar at his company for later that week. Unaware that she is there illegally, Beto reminds Ambar to bring her ID to the job interview.
We also get confirmation that due to Ambar’s mom’s illness, Ambar chose to put her life on hold, including not going to college, in order to be by her side until she passed. As the family sit for dinner, Beto offers Ambar one of his wife’s old coats. This dude is the nicest person in the movie so far.
Arriving back at the boarding house, Ambar follows some strange rumbling sounds to the basement door but finds it padlocked. She then notices scratches at the foot of the wooden frame but in a jump scare Red shows up asking if she lost something.
He tells her the basement is off limits and also closes the door of the nearby study when Ambar looks over to it. Clearly somebody has some secrets… but why is it always the basement? Ambar requests the money from her deposit back but Red reveals he already spent it on supplies for renovations and apologizes.
Back in her room, Ambar hears crying coming from the vent again and this time decides to go down to Freja’s room. At Freja’s door, Ambar knocks but gets no response. Realizing the door is ajar, she pushes it open and finds the room empty. I’m talking ‘no one’s ever lived here’ empty. She also finds the same bluish powder that was on her door knob along the door frame.
That night Ambar has a dream of being in the hospital by her mother’s side. Her mother suddenly stops talking and points to something at the far end of the room asking what it is.
The following day Ambar asks her boss for an advance but he’s less than enthusiastic about the request. He berates her work performance and puts her in the packing section which I assume pays more?
Later while she’s packing some boxes, we see a moth fly behind Ambar and a ghostly hand wraps around her shoulder. Ambar jumps but when she turns around, the hand and the moth are gone.
After work, Ambar is at a bar with Kinsi and she reveals the reason the ID needs to say Texas is because she lied to Beto about her birthplace. Kinsi offers to pay the remaining two thousand for the ID as long as Ambar agrees to loan her money in the future on top of paying her back. Ambar jumps at the opportunity and gives Kinsi the one thousand dollars she had left.
Arriving back at the house, Ambar sees a man banging his head against the basement door. Abiding once again by the “mind your own damn business” rule, specifically the sub-clause: “that’s some weird shit”, Ambar heads upstairs to her room.
Sometime later the man walks over to Ambar’s door, chants something in a different language, and bangs once on her door before walking away.
So it was nice of him to introduce himself.
That night, Ambar heads to the kitchen and meets two new women renting rooms in the house, Maria and Petra. Red then enters and invites Maria and Petra upstairs to ‘party’.
Before he leaves, Ambar mentions seeing another man in the house despite it being woman only. Red tells her it was just his brother Becker (played by David Figlioli). And, I guess this makes it okay for him to bang his head on doors since Ambar doesn’t follow up with ‘why is your brother being creepy?’.
While the party happens upstairs, Ambar decides to no longer go by the ‘mind your own damn business’ rule and enters the closed-off study. There she finds a recorder playing the same chanting that Becker recited outsider her door. The voice in the recorder then starts talking about sacrificing women, the elderly, and children in order to receive blessings like it’s a normal thing to do.
Continuing through the room, Ambar sees a macuahuitl (ceremonial wooden club with embedded obsidian blades) and several books on rituals for an ancient Aztec goddes, Itzpapalotl. She spots a picture of a married couple, Arthur and Mary, posing with the stone box that was in her dream.
Although Ambar wouldn’t know this, Arthur and Mary appear to be Red and Becker’s parents as well as the explorers who led the expedition at the start of the movie. Starting to feel like there’s some real ritual sacrifice fuckery going on around here.
As Ambar looks at the picture, the recorder skips and plays a loud scream causing Ambar to drop it. In a brief glimpse, a ghost appears on the far side of the room which appears to be Ambar’s mother but disappears before Ambar can see it.
The next day Ambar arrives at work and gives Kinsi a call as she is supposed to bring the forged documents but Kinsi doesn’t answer. Inside, Ambar asks her boss about Kinsi and he tells her she quit that morning through text. Realizing she might have been scammed she demands Kinsi’s address but her boss refuses and fires her instead.
That night while Ambar showers, she sees Freja, looking pretty ghostly, standing behind the shower curtain. Just to solidify it is a ghost, when Ambar pulls the curtain back, Freja has disappeared.
Rushing out of the bathroom, Ambar bumps into Red who asks if she’s alright. Ambar asks if he’s seen Freja but he says she moved out several days ago. Red tells her with Petra and Maria renting rooms he has more money and is able to give Ambar her deposit back but, she’ll have to wait till the following day.
That night a clearly shaken Ambar listens to voicemails from her mom to help her relax when she spots a moth and kills it. Moments later the moth is flying around again and we get a jump scare when the ghost of Ambar’s mom appears at the foot of her bed. This turns out to be a nightmare but when Ambar wakes up she sees her front door is open.
Hearing a woman crying, Ambar walks over to her door but stops when she hears footsteps run past her and into the room. The ghost of Mary appears and tells the other ghost she must prepare her or else Arthur will take them both.
Mary lunges into the room as her ghost disappears. A struggle ensues between Mary and the other ghost as we see items in Ambar’s room break and fall onto the ground. It appears as if the ghosts in the house are acting out their last moments, like a ghost play.
The sounds of items crashing continue out into the hallway and Ambar follows them to another crying ghost. The ghost begs Mary to leave her alone but she’s violently dragged away in a jump scare. Ambar runs back to her room, packs her things, and calls Beto to pick her up.
Beto informs her he is out of town looking at colleges with his son and recommends she call the police. Ambar says she can’t and admits she’s in the country illegally. Beto tells her he’ll visit her as soon as he can but refuses to send her money as they just met.
Ambar rushes to Red’s room and knocks asking for her deposit back. Becker opens the door and tells her Red isn’t there but he’ll send him to her when he returns.
Wandering around the city with no place to go, Ambar ends up on a train when everyone on it suddenly vanishes. Looking around she sees the ghost of her mother sitting across from her who looks over to the other end of the subway car.
Ambar turns and sees the stone box sitting there, open. A scream is heard and arms pop out of the box.
This turns out to be a nightmare and Ambar wakes up in a diner. She makes a phone call and a little while later Red shows up with a bruised face and cut lip. Ambar asks for her deposit but Red says he left it back at the house. When he received her phone call, he rushed over to the diner as she sounded like she was in trouble.
Red tells her he’ll take her back to the house to get her money but is hesitant since Becker didn’t agree on giving her a refund. It’s implied Becker beat up Red for even offering to give her the refund. We learn that Becker is sick and Red puts up with the abuse since he feels a responsibility to take care of his brother. With no other choice Ambar agrees to go back to the house with Red.
Inside, Red tells Ambar her money is in her room and she drops her coat and bag by the front door before she runs up. Ambar searches through her room and, unsurprisingly, doesn’t find the money. Red appears at her door and apologizes. He tells her he really was going to give it to her but after Becker found out, he had no other choice.
Becker enters the room, starts chanting, and spritzes wine around the room. He then forces Ambar to drink some of it and throws her on the ground. Before the two leave the room, Red asks Ambar not to try to leave as Becker will just make it worse.
That night Maria and Petra sneak to Ambar’s room and ask to stay with her as they have also been threatened by Becker. The three decide their best bet is to wait till morning to attempt an escape as Becker stays up all night watching the basement door but sleeps during the day. As they wait, Petra tells Ambar the house is strange and there are weird things going on.
No shit.
She reveals she has been having nightmares involving her son back in Romania and a stone box that she believes is in the basement. Ambar confirms she has also been having nightmares and it’s implied Maria has as well.
Sometime later the women are awoken by the cries of other women coming from the vents. Petra tells Ambar they are the sounds of past victims. Looking over to the otherside of the room, Ambar sees their ghosts.
After Ambar sees her mother’s ghost, the scene is revealed to be another nightmare and Ambar awakes to Petra’s screams begging her to wake up.
Red and Becker have returned to the room and the women fight back but they are overpowered. Becker tosses Ambar against a wall but before he can do anymore damage, the front doorbell rings. Red heads downstairs as Becker locks Ambar in a room.
Red opens the front door and it’s… Beto looking for Ambar. Did not expect him to make a comeback as he seemingly brushed Ambar off earlier. Red says he’s never heard of Ambar and she probably lied about staying at the house.
From the door Beto spots the coat his wife gave to Ambar and points it to Red. Though Red denies it’s Ambar’s, Ambar has spotted Beto from the second floor window and breaks it to call out to him. Beto pushes past Red and runs up the stairs to Ambar but is met with a locked door.
Red calls out to Becker who quickly catches Beto and mercilessly beats him. His blood and a tooth slip under Ambar’s door. Red runs upstairs and questions what Becker did. It’s implied Beto is dead, though we never see the body and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s: No body, No death.
Becker doesn’t respond to Red’s question and simply tells him to prepare upstairs, implying they are going to ritualistically sacrifice the women. A short time later the women are put into old dingy dresses and chained up in Red’s room. Becker carries a crying Maria downstairs as Red tells him to calm down and tries to warn him it’s too many women at once.
Red prepares Ambar for her turn by rubbing some blue powder on her arms and legs. Ambar questions why he’s doing this so we can get some exposition on what is going on.
Before Becker and Red moved to the house it was owned by their parents who, unbeknownst to them, were sacrificing women to the stone box giving them good health. Due to the increasing cost of Becker’s medical bills, the brothers moved back to the house to discover their father had sacrificed their mother.
The two killed their father and decided to fix up the house in order to start a legitimate business. Unfortunately as Becker spent more time with the stone box, it started to poison his mind and he became obsessed. After using it, he discovered the sacrifice healed him but only partially. Red agreed to help Becker but only until he is fully healed.
Ambar begs Red to let her go and for a moment it appears the reluctant brother is willing to help her but, he apologizes as Becker enters the room. Becker tells Ambar “the last one fought” and shows her several deep scratches on his hand healing due to the sacrifice.
Becker carries Ambar down to the basement as several ghosts of past victims look on. Placing her on a table, he chains her up and proceeds to the stone box, opening it before leaving the room.
Moths begin flying around the room as we hear loud thumps coming from the box. The basement door opens and a badly beaten Beto runs in! He unchains Ambar and the two run out of the room as growling emerges from the box. In the other room the two bust through a door into pure darkness.
As Ambar calls out for Beto the room transforms into her mother’s hospital room. We see the same scene from Ambar’s nightmare from earlier but this time Ambar realizes something is wrong. We cut back to Ambar in the basement and it’s revealed Beto never came in as she is unconscious and still chained to the table.
Back in the nightmare Ambar hears the growing and the thumping as her mother asks her to stay with her. In the real world we see the Itzpapalotl emerge from the box and position itself to eat Ambar’s head.
In the hospital, Ambar’s mother once again asks her to stay with her but Ambar rejects her. The rejection surprises Itzpapalotl who appears to be the one in control of the dream. Ambar continues to reject her mother’s wishes and then suffocates her with her pillow allowing her to wake up from the nightmare.
Essentially Itzpapalotl seems to need willing sacrifices and puts her victims in a memory where they agreed to ‘sacrifice’ themselves for someone else. When their victims agree, they’re inadvertently agreeing to be sacrificed as well.
Since Ambar has rejected the ritual, Itzpaplotl returns to her box and Ambar is able to free herself from the chains. She wanders upstairs and is about to leave but hears Petra’s cries coming from upstairs as she is now being prepared for the ritual. Ambar grabs the obsidian blade-embedded macuahuitl from earlier and heads upstairs walking past Beto’s dead body.
Meanwhile Becker realizes something is wrong as he doesn’t feel the healing effects of the ritual and tells Red to check on it. Red opens the door in time for Ambar to slice at his hand. She then stabs him in the leg, breaking off a piece of an obsidian blade in it. Red pulls it out but is then struck in the face, knocking him out.
Becker rushes over but Ambar is able to slash at his arm. He is still able to overpower her, tossing aside the macuahuitl, and throwing her to the ground. Becker then stomps on her ankle, breaking it, and grabs the macuahuitl. Before he can kill her, Petra unties herself and pushes him aside.
Petra runs out of the room but Becker grabs her and throws her down the stairs, killing her. Returning to the room, he grabs Ambar as she tries to crawl away. Unbeknownst to him, Ambar has grabbed the piece of the macuahuitl that broke off in Red’s leg and uses it to slice Becker’s neck open.
Becker drops to his knees, grabbing his neck as he bleeds out. Ambar hobbles back to the room, grabs the macuahuitl, and returns to bash Becker’s head in. This is also the point where it feels like the movie remembered it was Rated R and decides to show Becker’s head completely bashed in. Ambar then hears the severely injured Red inside the room waking up and she gets an idea.
An awful idea.
Ambar had a wonderful, awful idea.
We cut to Red being sacrificed to Itzpapalotl as he begs for Ambar not to do it. Ambar limps towards the front door as the sacrifice is completed and she sees Red’s ghost in another room. The film ends as her wounds heal themselves including her leg thanks to Itzpapalotl and she turns back in amazement towards the basement.
Post Watch Questions:
Will Ambar be corrupted by the box like Becker was?
Is Itzpapalotl cool with any sacrifice? The recordings stated only children, women, and elderly and based on the ghosts, only women had been sacrificed before. Red did not fit any of those categories.
What the fuck happened to Kinsi?
Review:
I enjoyed No One Gets Out Alive, it’s not terribly scary, if at all, but all the other aspects of it are pretty good. The acting by most of the cast is a highlight, in particular Cristina Rodlo and Marc Menchaca. You definitely feel Ambar’s increasing desperation and Red’s reluctance throughout the film.
Overall the story is easy to follow and entertaining, playing out like a good by-the-books horror movie. But, that’s where it stays, it doesn’t do anything mind-blowing or drastically unique that elevates it to a great movie. It’s an okay to good horror movie and there’s nothign wrong with that.
A big positive, for me, was the use of Itzpapalotl instead of it being just a haunted house. It’s always nice to see a horror movie rely on a different mythology for its scares instead of using the old same tropes.
A minor negative was none of the characters really have a character arc. Red could have had a negative character arc but we don’t spend enough time with him to see that play out.
It seems like Ambar is meant to have a character arc where she overcomes her willingness to sacrifice/put her life on hold for her mother but we don’t see it play out. She goes from dreaming about her mother’s ghost to rejecting her in Itzpapalotl dream. We don’t see what triggers or changers her to make her want to reject her mother.
Annoyingly with some tweaks this issue could have been solved for both Red and Ambar’s character. Both are, in a sense, sacrificing themselves for others, Red is doing something he knows is wrong to help his brother and Ambar put her life on hold for her mother.
The scene where Ambar tries to convince him to help her could have been the moment they both realize what they truly want. Instead, it’s used for solely exposition.
Overall the movie is still good and I would recommend it if you’re looking for a light horror movie.
Cast IMDB