2018: A Quiet Place (2018)

Directed by: John Krasinski
Written by: John Krasinski. Bryan Woods, Scott Beck
Starring: John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds
IMDb Link

It's nice to have a horror movie that's actually really damn good with a lot of heart and some layers.

The world has been invaded and humanity all but wiped out by a species of monstrous alien that hunts by sound. Those few who survive do so by adapting to a silent life. The story follows the Abbott family, beset by personal tragedy and struggling to emotionally connect with one another because of it. Regan (Simmonds) blames herself and feels pushed away by her father Lee (Krasinski), Lee is failing to deal with the rift between him and his daughter while also contending with preparing his son Marcus for manhood and keeping connected with his pregnant wife Evelyn (Blunt). Evelyn is preparing for the ordeal of childbirth in a world where she can make no sound and Marcus learns to grapple with the fear that can cripple his ability to survive. All of this echoes with the pain of the initial catastrophe, and we are reminded again and again of just how much it has splintered each character individually and as a unit.

That's what makes A Quiet Place so compelling; the silence in the movie is effective as a horror tool, but it more importantly drives right to the emotional core of the film, standing also as a strong metaphor for the distance and break down in communication between parent and child, with a sense of coming of age and the identity parents find in their children. That's a lot of poignant weight coming from a movie that's about a family hiding from monsters, and though it's delivered in short bursts between ongoing conflict, it's definitely effective in its given context. There are a few contrivances in how these character arcs all coincide right as they need to do to but a handful of small actions, like a bag pulling on a nail raising it up as the obvious set up of the kickoff to the big conflict, but these small moments don't really hurt the movie so much as they feel inevitable given the fact that people have to completely alter how they live in accordance with being quiet. The performances sell it, too, drawing focus away from any potential annoyances with convenient/inconvenient coincidences, and these little actions lead to some of the more intense horror moments in the film, making them easily forgivable.

The silence is used to excellent effect here. There's a really interesting mixture of perspectives here, as the movie directs us to focus on characters in a scene by what we hear rather than what we see. We get tranquil ambiance offset by the tension of its context, we hear the difference between quiet and pure nothingness when we switch to Regan's perspective, and any dropped item crashes like thunder to contrast. It gives the movie a consuming presence, and allows even the tiniest scares to hit with maximum effect. This can be annoying when it falls in to the usual horror movie tropes, like fake-out scares and non-diagetic loud noises accompanying already loud noises to attempt to obnoxiously maximise their effect, but for the most part A Quiet Place is peacefully and terrifyingly restrained, with key horror moments landing exactly as they need to.

The Short Version: A Quiet Place is a well-crafted nail-biting horror with a cool concept, a strong emotional core, and some solid allegory, and despite falling in to a few common horror trappings, I highly recommend it.

Rating: 7.5/10

Published April 6th, 2018