A Quiet Place
John Krasinski’s film “A Quiet Place” is an anxiety inducing watch. It wants you to participate in the characters’ struggle for silence rather than just observe them as they suffer in a world of relentless sound. The best horror movies succeed because we care about the people on screen and dread what might happen to them; here, it’s fair to say that there are times when I cried out loud, my hand moving involuntarily to my mouth. But even if those things weren’t true, I’d still be able to tell you this: “A Quiet Place” is a pretty damn good horror movie.
Krasinski wastes no time with his script, co-written by Bryan Woods and Scott Beck. We see a family Krasinski plays the father, Emily Blunt his wife and Noah Jupe (“Suburbicon”), Millicent Simmonds (“Wonderstruck”) and Cade Woodward their kids scouring an abandoned grocery store for supplies on “Day 89” of some unexplained cataclysm. They speak using sign language and move barefoot so as not to make noise, though the youngest (Woodward) really wants a noisy toy rocket; it’s all Mom can do to stop him from taking off with it into the parking lot.
It becomes clear soon enough that sound will kill you in this world. This knowledge makes for one of the most intense opening sequences I’ve seen in any horror film: As Krasinski and Simmonds walk home through town past a whiteboard filled with desperate messages left behind by survivors; past another whiteboard where someone has crossed out that day’s tally of deaths after writing “IT HEARD THAT”; under a bridge where Jupe waits, terrified, at its far end we understand exactly what kind of movie we’re watching, what kind of threats these children face every hour of every day, not just from monsters but from things that could happen to the human body when it runs out of water, medicine, hope.
Most of “A Quiet Place” takes place more than a year after these events, as the mother’s belly swells with another baby and the family has yet to recover from its loss. (It is worth noting that Simmonds, like her character, is deaf; it is also worth noting though not for reasons of representation or inclusivity that she is already one of our most gifted young performers.) The father has converted their farm into a WPA poster from hell: He’s rigged strings of lights around the property so they’ll warn when monsters are near, marked every creaky floorboard with paint so he can walk between them in silence.
But he’s still working on ways to protect his wife and children. Newspapers plaster his basement walls; an old television set plays grainy black-and-white footage of monsters attacking cities; a radio hums quietly with static while he adjusts its tuner back and forth across dead air. What does this information do for him? For us? Does it help him understand how they think? How many there are? Where they came from or what they want?
Krasinski knows that the best way to get an audience invested in any movie monster is to invest in their mythology. So we learn bits and pieces about these creatures as he learns them or maybe even before: Were they created by some malevolent force as punishment for our sins? Are they regular extraterrestrial invaders who just happen to be blind but have super-sensitive hearing like Daredevil? Can they smell blood like sharks?
What I thought was thrilling about “A Quiet Place,” though beyond how well Krasinski uses sound design; beyond how sensitively he depicts this family’s dynamics or how ingeniously grounded in reality many of their choices feel was the idea that these creatures might not be all that different from us. Maybe, like the best movie villains, they’re just reflections of our worst tendencies: selfishness, cruelty, the drive to build a better mousetrap.
To put it another way: They’re hunters because we’re hunters. And in this post-apocalyptic hearth and home where love means sacrifice and silence is survival who among us wouldn’t do anything necessary to protect our family?
It is also helpful that he demonstrates composition and storytelling economically in a way he never has in his previous movies. “A Quiet Place” is a no-nonsense, lean movie the best kind when it comes to thrillers. It feels like every shot has been considered incredibly carefully as the film ticks like a clock on a bomb; balancing scares with scenes that set up the emotional stakes and the world of these characters.
The film has a beautiful sense of geography, almost all of it taking place on a farm that Krasinski and his technical team lay out in such a way that allows us to feel like we know it. This isn’t one of those films that mistakes shaky camerawork for horror storytelling, it’s got a refined visual language that plays beautifully with perspective and the terrifying nature of a world in which we can’t yell to warn/find people or hear what’s coming around corners if you’re deaf.
Also without spoiling anything there is very much an empowering message at the core of “A Quiet Place.” It’s more about empowerment than sheltering, and it’s this emotional hook that really elevates the final act. It helps tremendously that Krasinski completely sticks the landing. One of the best final shots in horror in years and yes, it comes with an auditory cue you’ve heard before from another franchise that had this exact audience cheering here at SXSW.
With almost no dialogue, “A Quiet Place” relies heavily on visual storytelling but I’ll admit I think it uses composer Marco Beltrami’s strings for jump scares too often as crutches; total conjecture but one can almost sense Platinum Dunes head Michael Bay insisting on those devices would love to see an even sparser version of A Quiet Place in terms of sound-scares or overheated score (which I loved).
We live in such a noisy world, it is hard to imagine constant sound being taken away. We use noise to express ourselves, it’s a part of who we are as people. And “A Quiet Place” weaponizes that part of the human condition in a way that owes a debt to films like “Alien” but also charts its own new ground. So many great horror films are about people who have to adapt to survive they have to challenge their own insecurities or preconceptions to make it through the night.
In that sense, great horror films are often about empowerment; taking away that which some might perceive as weak. “A Quiet Place” shreds the nerves but it does so in a way that feels rewarding: you don’t just walk out having experienced a thrill ride, you walk out on a high, the kind of high that only comes from the best horror movies.
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