New Release Review: A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place

(2018. Director: John Krasinski  Starring: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe)

SYNOPSIS:
The world has been devastated and human life is barely continuing. One family will do whatever it takes to survive. They must do so in absolute silence though as something lurks outside hunting them ...and it hears everything.

Shhh... listen...

Back in 2012 cinemagoers were hit with an infuriating epidemic. The new filmgoing generation, having learned to consider being away from social media the equivalent of being starved of oxygen, were bringing their mobile phones into screens. This led to a wave of people being loud and annoying during films. The Prince Charles cinema in London came up with a unique solution. Volunteers were given free tickets if they wore a full body black 'morphsuit' to make them invisible in the darkness of the screen. In return, they were expected to sneak up on anyone being a nuisance to the rest of the audience and terrify them into stillness. This raised various questions such as whether it's okay to spy on your customers, if it's morally acceptable to punch someone square in the jaw for having a loud phone conversation in the middle of Rust and Bone (it totally is!) and where do you buy those morphsuits because this sounds great.

They could've saved themselves the effort however by simply screening John Krasinski's ingenious new horror A Quiet Place.

In this film, sound itself is the enemy. The characters creep through their lives under a blanket of silence (or an actual literal mattress of silence when stowed away in their relatively safe underground burrow) and every snapped twig, dropped glass or yelp of pain could lead to certain death. With an audience fully immersed in this engaging, terrifying world, every single crunch of popcorn echoes with sinister portent.

It's a brilliant gimmick of the kind you wouldn't be surprised to see used in a classic episode of The Twilight Zone (or more recently Black Mirror). Horror cinema has always relied on great sound design more than any other genre with an uncomfortable hush preparing us for the jolt of a bloodcurdling scream. However the thing that makes A Quiet Place work so well is that is doesn't simply expect the gimmick to elevate a rote survival story but makes the film's constant threat an intrinsic part of the characters' arcs and the thematic journey of the story.

The film's smartest and bravest move happens in it's opening scenes in a moment that instantly raises the stakes and increases the film's threat level while also giving the film it's deep emotional core. It's often said in screenwriting guides that what characters don't say is of equal importance to what they do and never has that been more apparent than in A Quiet Place. The faces of our character's are like a roadmap of pain, fear, loss and frustration that they cannot, or are frightened to, communicate. There is a sense that even without the constant hazard of hyper-perceptive monsters outside, the demons living within the characters hearts would still snatch the words from their mouths. Krasinski and Emily Blunt's harried parents seem to be not only at risk of losing their children and each other quite literally to the predators hunting them but also at risk of losing each other emotionally to the silence that fills their house. This is a film that is as much about how hard it can be to communicate with those you love especially in times of grief that cannot be spoken as it is a fun, suspense filled creature feature.

That said, it is a really fun, suspense filled creature feature. The monster design is suitably nasty and, especially in the film's back half when the character arcs take a backseat to a rollercoaster ride of increasing tension and shock, Krasinski shows himself to have a deft hand  at stacking set pieces on top of each other leaving you clutching at your armrests waiting for a chance to exhale. (Some moments are even oddly reminiscent of the surprisingly fear-filled sequences in Spielberg's Jurassic Park.) One common complaint in horror films is how supposedly intelligent characters are often expected to make ridiculous mistakes in order to forward the plot. In A Quiet Place it's instead impressive to see the lead characters come up with pretty innovative solutions to the problems the film throws at them. When the character's are able to communicate it is mostly through American Sign Language (ASL) and it's fascinating just how much tone and expression the cast manage to imbue into these gestures (John Krasinki's are often quick and efficient to match his desperate survivor mentality, Emily Blunt's are more slow and loving and the young Millicent Simmonds somehow brilliantly manages to telegraph the spite and exasperation of teenage rebellion into a handful of signed words.) The performances are universally excellent and Emily Blunt deserves special credit for creating yet another strong yet complicated heroine bolstering her status as one of most impressively talented movie stars of our time.

With the knowledge that John Krasinski and Emily Blunt are a real life married couple (with two young children of their own) it's hard not to find yourself trying to read ulterior meanings into the film's setup. Living in America where children are routinely taught how to silently hide under their desks during Active Shooter drills, the threats to the lives of children is a constant feature of everyday life. Or possibly they are inspired by their need to protect their family from the endless aggressive intrusions on their lives by gossip journalists and a public which sees celebrity as something to be punished with humiliation and violations of privacy. Or maybe they simply wanted to make a scary monster movie and knew exactly how to make it work effectively.

Whichever it is, they succeeded masterfully. A Quiet Place is a clockwork precision piece of subtle film craft on it's surface but if you listen carefully you can hear a deep primal scream of fear for our future and the world we are leaving for the next generation.

Review by The Mogul.