*In a whisper voice* Shhhh……I’m gonna tell you something. It’s about the new John Krasinski directed and starring movie with his wife, Emily Blu….SHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! What did I say??? Ok…well this new, movie, A Quiet Place, is probably now the new placeholder at the top of the horror renaissance standings! It’s emotional, scary, fun and…..wait…oh….no….I think they heard us!!! RUN!!!!!
The first 10 minutes of this movie is silent, but introduces us to the Abbotts as they raid a general store in a ghost town. Parents Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and Lee (John Krasinski) and oldest child Regan (Millicent Simmonds) are looking for medicine to help their sick son/brother Marcus (Noah Jupe). Why are they shopping in silence? Well, we find out a few minutes later to help set up the stakes for the world, and then fast forward about a year. The family has settled into a relatively stable existence on a remote farm with many preparations for the creatures who hunt based on sound. There’s one big wrinkle that’s happening soon: mom is pregnant. So the family goes about figuring out how to keep a baby quiet.
It’s kind of amazing how many fears Krasinski is able to insert into A Quiet Place. I myself covered my mouth several times to keep from gasping. Fan of the jump scares? No problem, silence works to make any noise 10x more jarring. Grotesque images in your scare wheelhouse? No problem, the sound creatures are as frightening of a creature I have seen in a movie in a long time; I know because as you see more of them you get more scared because of how creepy they appear. Are you an atmospheric person? Well, extended silence puts you on edge almost immediately, plus the family preparations are useful but creepy, like bright red lights that flicker, or painted spots on the floor that may or may not drag up nails, the low-fi TV security cameras, and the empty wooden homes aren’t exactly inviting either. How about slow motion car crashes? Whew boy, the big moments happen here: there’s a scene in a bathtub that you’ll have yourself closing one eye and opening the other, or my personal scariest: a scene in the barn with a few feet of water on the floor and the creature silently entering the water and disappearing while something designed to make noise is one misstep away from doing so.
The fears that hit the hardest though, are the emotional ones. A Quiet Place is an extreme study of the day-in-day-out worries and struggles of parenting. Regan is expressing some teenage lash out behavior and wants to be given more responsibility, and Marcus is just mortified all the time about the world around him as a wide eyed innocent, both relatable problems….but in a world where sound monsters can murder you if you make a peep. So Lee teaches Marcus some basic life skills, and the two only push Regan so far before they pull back and leave her alone. This effort pays off in the third act when…surprise…the kids are left on their own, and use the skills they’ve clearly learned from their parents to remember what to do in the event of a separation. There’s also a horrific event that happens early on that each family member’s life has been altered by due to guilt. The whole family believes they had a role to play in the incident, and they all blame themselves for what happened. In addition, residually, Lee has a hard time looking at Regan because of her role and her disability (that is actually now a HUGE asset), and Regan completely believes she doesn’t deserve love because of what she’s done, which is heartbreaking. A Quiet Place shows us all of this wordlessly, through amazing performances from Krasinski, Blunt, Jupe, and Simmonds. The last 30 minutes of the film are scary as hell yes, but also a love letter to the power of family and love, and will bring you to tears while you’re being scared out of your mind.
In a summer that’s going to be dominated by sequels and franchises, the horror genre has continued to emerge as a place where new and fresh ideas are heavily encouraged and promoted. A Quiet Place puts yet another seal of approval on the genre being taken seriously as an art form. All those people who poo poo the genre are not paying attention, and maybe should listen to the silence of of A Quiet Place and not the silence of unbought tickets to another pointless lame sequel.