REVIEW: A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place is a tender story about family bonds, dealing with loss, and forgiveness while also being a cutting edge creature feature.  The typical modern horror movie is very loud, with the quiet moments generally happening just before a boisterous scare attempt.  Noise is applied often in formulaic ways that actually make predicting jump scares an easy task.  There are some movies that stand out for how they use sound (I remember The Others was a great theatre experience because of this), and A Quiet Place is possibly the best example of utilizing audio to tell the story.

What we have is a family of five that are trying to live in a world where alien monsters have arrived and hunt people for food.  The creatures cannot see and use heightened hearing to find their meals.  People need to be quiet to survive, and the Abbott family has three children, and kids can't help but make noise at times.  The parents are Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and Lee (John Krasinski), and it is not long before something tragic happens to their family leading to friction between the father and Regan (Millicent Simmonds), the eldest daughter.  Regan is def, so the family knows how to use sign language, which comes in handy.

The majority of the film takes place on one day.  Evelyn is very pregnant, and there is a great deal of tension over when the baby is going to come.  With monsters hunting by sound, the audience knows that giving birth to a crying infant could mean death.  A lot of what happens in this movie comes down to the sounds that get made.  With almost everything quiet, the times when director John Krasinski taps into the small sounds of life, such as footsteps and children playing a board game make an impact.  The subtle noises make it so that when something loud happens it jolts us, being very alien to the experience we are a part of.  Everything we hear tells as much a tale as what we see.  Krasinski's attention to the auditory side of the film is masterful, and creates a full body interaction with the movie.

Playing off of the sound effects is the terrifying score from Marco Beltrami, who has had two Oscar nominations for his work on The Hurt Locker, and 3:10 to Yuma.  Even though the year isn't yet complete, I will already say that he deserves to be nominated for A Quiet Place, and he deserves the win.  What he writes weaves organically with the script, making the power of sound so dynamic and overwhelming.  It has been a while since I have heard a score as good as this one.

A Quiet Place is all around technically masterful.  The editing stands out through just how tight the shots move from one to another, with scenes ending just at a point that will have your brain imagining all sorts of things.  We get slow moments that last not a second too long, and taught build up to tense moments.  Exactly how this movie is composed and structured shows that Krasinski has a built in understanding of how long any scene or individual shot needs to be.

The story that is told is very touching, and I would only guess that for those out there who are parents, the movie may end up hitting the emotions more than it did for me.  I felt that through Krasinski's writing and the acting of everyone involved I understood the emotions of the parents.  Many people, while the events may not be as tragic as the Abbott's, can relate to the hurt that can arise and just how our relationships are affected.  Make sure you let others know how you feel, and embrace what you have.  The themes of family are strong, a deeply heartfelt voyage through a time of trial that just happens to have monsters as well.  The creatures aren't the real villain here.  The real antagonist is what happens when we don't know just how those close to us feel.

A Quiet Place may not have the smart social commentary written in Get Out, but that doesn't mean that it isn't as deserving for getting some Oscar nominations.  This is a film that is much more than the scares, a movie that brings the viewer on an emotional journey that has significant heft.  The power of the film, as well as the scares, comes from a combination of many different techniques that are all executed in a way that allows them to lean on each other.  All aspects of A Quiet Place are phenomenal, and they all serve each other, creating a masterful piece of cinema that is unmatched.

Rating - 4 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: A Quiet Place

There are many people out there that are willing to write horror movies off simply because of the genre they represent.  I will admit that there are scores of movies full of fatty tissue that make the horror genre seem surface level and without merit.  However, the history of horror movies shows a lineage intent on being more than just a jump scare.  They can be social commentaries, such as Night of the Living Dead, they can show the scope of the sins of the parents falling on their children, such as in A Nightmare on Elm Street, they can be about conquering personal fear in the face of duty, like in Jaws, or a an allegory on the monster of unresolved grief, as seen in The Babadook.  There is an enormous list of horror movies that are actually just good stories that happen to be set for scares at the same time.

This year we have been given a horror movie, A Quiet Place, that not only nails the audience to their seats in suspense, but is also a rich story about family tragedy and the pain that comes with it.  People would most likely know John Krasinski from his work as Jim Halpert in the American version of The Office.  Krasinksi co-wrote the script for A Quiet Place (along with Scott Beck and Bryan Woods) as well as serving as its director.  I have always enjoyed Krasinski and his ability to be immediately likeable, much like his British Office counterpart, Martin Freeman.  Never would I have pictured him making a horror movie, especially one that would take place as my favourite film of the year so far.

The movie is set after an alien invasion.  Much like creature feature Tremors, the monsters hunt by sound, meaning that the surviving humans need to be continuously quiet.  We are introduced to the Abbot family, with Lee (Krasinski) and his wife, Evelyn (Emily Blunt, who is Krasinksi's real life wife).  Survival for them is made difficult because they have three young children who, of course, make mistakes at times.  Once crucial mistake happens at the beginning of the film when tragedy strikes, a fatal error that came from a decision of daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds), bringing up a tension between her and her father.  Simmonds is deaf, which works well, because so is Regan.  We at times understand the world from her perspective, sort of a contrast to the audible sensitivities of the monsters.

Throughout the film, Regan is unhappy.  She believes that her father blames her for the tragedy of their family, and she reaches a boiling point over being treated as a child.  The interesting aspect of this is that we can understand why Lee would treat her this way, having seen how she had messed up in the past.  Both points of view are understandable, and the dynamic between the two is the main point of the film, with Lee needing to eventually show Regan how much he loves her and the sacrifice that he is willing to make for her.

One of the best used techniques in A Quiet Place is the use of sound.  The movie is so quiet, as the title would suggest, that when there is noise it hits home with the audience.  It stands out so much from the rest of the mostly silent film that it arrouses our anxiety, something that is needed to put us in the place of the Abbotf family.  Mixed into the movie is a lurking and omnipresent score by Marco Beltrami.  When the tension is increased, the music steals the show and adds a marvellous element of dreadful stimulation.

Krasinksi is very patient in how he tells the story.  He does what a lot of directors fail to do, and that is let a scene play out in full.  There are numerous moments when a simple sequence lasts a while, an effort that increases the understanding of their lives.  While moments may be rolled out slowly, Krasinski is a master in showing that it doesn't mean things will be boring.  There is not a wasted shot in the entire film, and the pacing is top notch, the run time vanishing quickly with never a sense of boredom.  We are absorbed in the story, and it never lets go of us for long enough to let us check our watches.

An interesting development in the story is the fact that Evelyn is pregnant and is due at any time.  Not only can labour be a loud endeavour, but it is quite hard to tell an infant to be quiet and not make a sound.  We may wonder why the heck Lee and Evelyn thought it was a good idea to procreate in such an environment, but that folly is easily forgiven.  It is merely the situation that we find them in, and they are characters that are impossible to hate.  It would be difficult to find a more likeable and sympathetic couple than John Krasinski and Emily Blunt.  The doom of labour hangs over them, leaving us to wonder if this is the event that eliminates the family completely.

The third act of this film is non-stop, a thrilling ride that could be taken multiple times.  While it is wall to wall suspense, the acting is what really makes it special.  Blunt has shown in the past that she can portray strong and kick ass characters (such as in Sicario and Edge of Tomorrow).  We get to see that fight in her again here, and everything she does is captivating.  Krasinski nails the part of dedicated and protective dad.  It is Simmonds, however, that bears the brunt of the emotional heft.  She is an absolute force in this film, a star that I hope gets many opportunities in the future.

As a horror, this movie works perfectly.  And, as a family drama, this movie works perfectly.  The best horror movies operate as more than just trying to make the audience nervous or scared.  They show us humanity, the underscoring emotions and motives that affect people.  A Quiet Place is a treat, as it has a very human story that is shrouded in a suspenseful and thrilling capsule.  There have been so many amazing horror films over the last number of years, and this is easily one of the best of them.

Rating - 4 out of 4 stars