A Quiet Place

photo courtesy of comingsoon.net

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

     A Quiet Place stars real-life couple Emily Blunt and John Krasinski as two parents struggling to keep their family alive in a nightmarish dystopian future. The movie, which was also co-written, directed, and produced by Krasinski, takes place in a world overtaken by fearsome (and sightless) monsters who use sound to detect their prey. In order to survive, the remaining humans live in near-complete silence.

     It’s easy to see the appeal of a movie like A Quiet Place. It has a certain built-in eeriness, the product of an unusually quiet soundscape (there’s next to no dialogue and minimal music) combined with a terrifying, always-just-around-the-corner monster. For the most part, A Quiet Place capitalizes on its intriguing premise, thanks in large part to its ability to create real stakes amidst all the monster magic, and for most viewers, that should be more than enough to make for a rewarding experience. But the premise that animates the movie’s plot also limits its potential, keeping A Quiet Place from becoming something truly sensational.

photo courtesy of scifinow.uk

     From a narrative perspective, A Quiet Place operates from a place of strength. As compared to any number of your average hit-or-miss horror flicks, it displays wonderfully confident storytelling: picking things up in media res, resisting the temptation to overexplain, and allowing character development to unfold naturally (as opposed to falling out in clunky, exposition-laden bulks). It’s a story that’s compact, efficient, knows what it’s about, gets the job done, and leaves before it overstays its welcome. And without giving anything away, it also manages to develop its themes in meaningful ways, culminating in a clever ending.

     Of course, A Quiet Place is a scary movie, first and foremost, and when it comes to scares, it wisely takes the Jaws-inspired, “less is more” approach, which helps it sustain a heightened level of suspense throughout—rather than just relying on gore or jump scares to freak people out. There’s a certain primal, elemental quality to the scares; as in many of the best monster movies, the monsters seem tailor-made to pinpoint and exploit some of our most basic vulnerabilities, which makes it all the more frightening when they finally do pop up. Add in a pinch of paranoia, and you’ve got a recipe for pretty spooky stuff.

photo courtesy of gq.com

     Underneath all the scary monster bits, though, A Quiet Place stays has something worthwhile to say. The main characters are a family, and the movie ultimately ends up being about the way that the need to survive challenges and puts into perspective one’s commitment to the people he or she loves. As the Abbott family becomes more desperate, their reliance on each other becomes all the more vital, and that lesson serves as the emotional core of the film. Obviously, none of that could be depicted without a solid cast, and Blunt and Krasinski are more than up to the task. The real star of the show, however, is Millicent Simmonds, the young actress who plays the Abbott’s daughter; her performance carries much of the emotional weight of the film.

photo courtesy of nerdist.com

     But as gripping as A Quiet Place can be, its otherwise well-executed premise limits the movie in key areas. For one thing, there are plenty of ways to pick apart the movie’s plot—ways I won’t be able to detail without giving things away—that undercut the believability of this dystopian world. Some are nitpicky, to be sure, but others feel like genuine contrivances. It’s never a good choice to make your characters make dumb, ill-informed choices, and A Quiet Place lets its characters make dramatic oversights on at least a few occasions. And as enjoyable as the movie’s hyper-sonically-sensitive monsters are, there’s really only so many ways to utilize them before they start losing their impact. They’re frightening the first time and they’re frightening in the most crucial places, but all the little frights in between are only so effective. Where other recent horror films (It Follows, for instance) have proved adept at turning gimmicky scares into something consistently interesting, A Quiet Place can’t quite move beyond variations of “be quiet or else.”

     FINAL VERDICT: A Quiet Place is an engrossing, suspenseful film with plenty of great ideas, but it rarely outgrows the scariness of its own trailer.

Watch the trailer here.

photo courtesy of movieweb.com