A quiet place – a review

In 2020 the world is overrun with carnivorous monsters that hunt on sound and are almost undefeatable. One young family tries its best to survive by adapting to the rules of this new world: by not making a sound.

There is a sub-genre in horror science fiction I always lovingly call the ‘depressing as heck’-genre. Movie like The road, Maggie and now a quiet place all take place on the American countryside and are more often than not depressing as heck. Just seeing a grain silo pop up automatically makes me rethink the possibly of a happy ending.

Just in case you wondered where The walking dead got its cues from.

That is also the strength of A quiet place. Partly because of the movies that came before this really is one of those movies that could go any path it wants. In short: anybody can die.

In this sense it is a bit annoying that the path this movie takes is actually rather trodden (and marked with sand).

The same old story

After we get to know the family the monsters attack and the plot moves rather smoothly into the well known survival-tropes comprised of a (obligatory) split up family each experiencing a variety of (well crafted) scare-scenes– with the main plotline almost like an afterthought.

In fact, I would argue that the scene this movie ends with could be a very original movie on its own.

Like any gimmick-based thriller A quiet place is comprised of various scenes making good use of the ‘make no sound’-angle. Like Don’t breath two years back.

The ‘blind’-version of this gimmick has also been used in various movies like:
Blind Fury and  Wait until dark.

But to get to those scenes the movie uses some rather questionable techniques. Namely a sudden nail (that, in any construction-sense, has no place to be there), a faulty door and, of course, a rather unwise pregnancy.

Now, this pregnancy thing is up for discussion. This is a religious family. Plus they did plan ahead on what to do when this loud baby comes. But for me seeing the female lead pregnant struck me a bit as: ‘really? That’s the wisest thing to do?’

Why this story?

Why does a movie follow certain characters to tell a story? The reason for this is simple because the experiences of this particular set of characters are important. Titanic could have followed Jack’s best friend as the main character but then the movie would have been over the minute the poor man got hit by that smokestack. So the movie needs to follow characters that have been on the ship from A to Z.

A quiet place has the same underlining reason. There is a reason why the main character is deaf. Not only does this allow certain nicely constructed suspense scenes. But she is also the key to solving this global problem. The story of John Smith in downtown L.A. is far less important to tell if all he does is run and hide.

The zombie game

Nathan Fillion once said in an interview that he’s a fan of the show The walking dead. And like any fan he enjoys fantasising what he would do in a zombie apocalypse and what people he could use in his group (a doctor, a technician, et cetera).

For those people that don’t really contribute anything he has another solution: “Tasty”.

The joke is of course that we humans love to fantasize about imaginary adventures. The zombies will never come and still we all have a well thought out plan in our minds.

I argue, however, that this ‘mindgame’ sometimes intervenes with the enjoyment of a movie. In A quiet place the main characters have to stay silent all the time. But anybody who has ever gone camping knows that mother nature is one loud mother. So why not use that?

Go to a place where it is ear deafening loud and live there.

Naturally going into this movie with this mindset automatically makes the movie harder to watch. So you have to let go. But, unfortunately, every time a character makes a mistake the little voice in the back of my head screams: “See, told you!”

The monsters

The monsters actually look very impressive and menacing. Like a lovechild between Cloverfield and those Lickers from Resident Evil. I especially enjoyed the thought out biology of the beings.

Having that said it is a bit convenient that these super-hearing creatures can’t smell or feel –not even sonar.

And yes, I thought it was hilarious that these aliens got destroyed the same way those aliens in Mars Attacks! met their maker.

As a filmmaker you have to make a choices. Concerning the monsters two choices I wish to highlight here. First I wonder whether the monsters were shown too much?

In the famous monster-movies from the past the beasty was hardly ever shown. Always lurking in the shadows, a glimmer here a part there –in a word fetishistic.

'Fetish' as in cutting up the bigger picture in smaller ones not to get contro
 over it but rather to make it bigger than life.

In A quiet place, however, -after the build up- the monster is shown all the time with three emphasizing shots of its inner ear. A bit too much for my taste. But, then again, if the monsters looked terrible it would have been far more of a problem. Luckily the monsters look impressive.

A second choice I wonder about is the use of night. It is common knowledge that tension works better in dimly lit rooms rather than broad daylight. Also CGI (the monsters) works far better in shadows.

Still, here we have monsters that don’t really use a biological hunting clock They attack day and night. So I wonder why this movie didn’t take the chance of creating some scares in the daytime?

Acting and directing

The acting then is absolutely fine. The kids: Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe play the high standards that child-actors are required to nowadays; Crying on cue, panic in the eyes.

I always think about that child-actress character in Notting Hill 
with a resume the size of a phonebook.

The (real-life couple) John Krasinski and Emily Blunt top it off as the loving parents willing to do anything for their children but also knowing that the kids can fend for themselves.

Krasinski also took on directing duties and for a first movie A quiet place is quite the achievement. My nitpickings aside Krasinski manages to let visuals tell the tale. With hardly any dialogue in the movie he has to. There are only one or two shots that I felt were a bit below par (a sudden meeting with a tractor). But overall he lets the camera do most of the telling from a respectable distance discarding the less important parts of the frame while making full use of the set design and the actors in them.

I did, however, have my doubts about some of the sound-design. Certain actions that should have made sound apparently didn’t.

Conclusion

A quiet place is a bit of a hit and miss for me. It has an interesting gimmick at its core and more than enough drama and character-work to make it interesting. However, in the end it is just another survive-monsters movie and I can’t get rid of the feeling that this movie could’ve been a bit more. Still a solid movie for a creepy night out; just stay quiet!