Horror movie trailers tend to get my eyes rolling these
days. Like this Truth or Dare’thing I just saw involving yet more teenagers
dying to some obtuse force that turns them into badly photoshopped Joker
facsimiles. Or Paranormal Activity 52: This Time It’s Not Your Other Farting In
Bed. Or Hellraiser: No, We Don’t Really Have Many Sights To Show You. But
sometimes we do get a solid modern classic like Get Out, or an actually unique
premise like A Quiet Place.
The premise is this—the world has been overtaken by
mysterious animalistic creatures that can home in on any sound above a whisper,
and can tear you to shreds in an instant. A small family doing their best to
survive in a remote area soon suffers a tragedy to them and despite all the
measures they’ve taken, from not talking above whispers to even marking the
least creaky floorboards, soon might find themselves falling apart anyway.
It’s quite interesting to watch things unfurl with no or
little dialogue—and even more interesting to see people in the cinema make as
little sound as they can themselves as not to turn heads while it’s all going
on. Unless you’re in a theater filled with assholes in which case my
condolences.
But nevertheless, the film does a decent job giving you the
broad strokes of characters with their acts, expressions, and the
environment—the father, John Krasinski, who also directs, is a determined
survivalist and resourceful, but nevertheless suffers with the relationship with
his children. Emily Blunt, the mother, is thinking to the future amidst it all
and is bent on protecting her unborn child. And then there’s the kids
themselves—Millicent Simmonds as their deaf daughter, who feels estranged from
it all, and Noah Jupe as her headstrong brother. Considering the lack of
emotive dialogue, you soon find yourself getting to know these people well.
The environment is also well planned out, which is always a
plus to me. You get to know where everything around their farm and their
shelter is, as well as some further locations that are nevertheless
significant, helping to ground the action and keep things coherent. This is
something done in some of my favorite horror pieces, like Carpenter’s The
Thing, and it does help draw you into the environment and make the inevitable
breaching of it by the monsters all the more impactful.
But before the monsters come in force, most of the film is
really more of a survivalist family drama of coping with losses and
relationships—don’t expect non-stop gore and action. You do get jump scares in
it all, but given how much loud sounds can lead to here they do actually feel impactful
and tension-rising. And every now and then…well, there’s a bit of actual
dialogue, but honestly, I prefer the non-verbal conversations over it.
Eventually, the creatures do arrive, and things start to amp
up—you’ll wince when nails go through feet, or even when Blunt finds herself
trapped while soon to give birth. The monsters themselves serve their purpose,
though their design isn’t especially unique. You are left to decide for
yourself if they’re aliens or supernatural or otherwise—and if you are
interested, the director himself clarified, to my own disappointment.
Overall, though, the film does the important thing of
actually making you, or trying to make you, care about the characters, and
making things relatable enough that you feel for their mishaps and the
disasters in their environment. It’s not a genre-changer, but A Quiet Place is definitely
a solid little piece that helps stand itself out among the dozen Scary Ghost
Jumpscare crapflicks spat out in recent times. Provided you don’t have too many
obnoxious popcorn-munchers with you, give it a watch if you like what you hear.
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