You probably know by now that I tend to wait a few years before catching up on new movies – I can’t be arsed driving to the nearest Cinema unless it’s something massive that I need to see, and there’s so many films old and foreign and not released in Cinemas that I watch as well/instead. The downside is that it’s a pain trying to avoid spoilers and by the time I get to writing a review, nobody cares about it anymore. I liked A Quiet Place but enough time has passed and the hype has died down now to the extent that I can say it’s not as good or as revolutionary as many would have you believe and despite an A List cast and interesting premise/gimmick, there’s essentially nothing here you haven’t seen before. The film also falls into standard horror tropes of stupid people doing stupid things for contrived reasons. But we’ll get to that.
The films begins at some point in time past an unexplored cataclysmic event. It appears that most of the human population of the world has been killed by some sort of alien/monster invader who attack by sound. Quite why we were so easily beaten is anyone’s guess but lets suspend such disbelief. We meet one family – a husband and wife and their three young children. The family have all adapted to living, communicating, and travelling in almost complete silence, existing in a remote farm on the outskirts of a remote farm. In the opening scenes we learn, in horrific fashion, just why it is so important to keep quiet. We then flash forward some time to see that the family is still trying to recover from that opening tragedy – dad and daughter have a lack of communication and unspoken blame/guilt thing going on, and mum is heavily pregnant. Daughter is mostly deaf and dad is trying to fix her hearing aid – this seems like it will be important later. Stuff happens and the family home is attacked.
A Quiet Place definitely feels like a B-Movie made for people who don’t like B-Movies. First, there’s the big budget and A-List cast, and secondly it’s made with more skill and subtlety than these sorts of films typically are. At its core though, it’s the same film you’ve seen a hundred times over elsewhere. It is better made but makes most of the same concessions to elicit fear and tension and falls into most of the usual pitfalls and tropes. Like your favourite slasher movie, there are several key moments when you’ll be shaking your head at the decisions characters make, when a more obvious and simple choice would have resolved a problem or saved a life. It lacks the gore and extreme action of many of these films, but makes up for it with a degree of seriousness, drama, and hopeless atmosphere. The most impressive element is the dedication to silence and use of sound, which a lesser film would abandon or fruitlessly exploit. The film was a surprise smash hit, latching on to the current run of so-called (terribly named) elevated horror, and a sequel is currently in the works (and may even be released by the time I post this). The cast each perform their roles with great skill and dedication, with Blunt and Krasinski adept and the young Simmonds and Jupe looking like future stars.
Let us know in the comments what you think of A Quiet Place!
The Spac Hole 