A Quiet Place (2018)
Directed by John Krasinski; screenplay co-written by Bryan Woods, Scott Beck and John Krasinski; starring John Krasinski, Emily Blunt and Millicent Simmonds.
3.5/5
I don't suppose any non-British readers will get this reference, but I think the creators of Primeval would probably have a strong case if they brought a lawsuit against Krasinski and co. I think there's at least some similarity between the gangly, grey, echolocating beasts in that late noughties, Doctor Who offseason replacement, and this mega-successful horror film.
Makes you wonder where real creativity is born, huh? Food for thought.
A Quiet Place was Emily Blunt’s second most successful role back in 2018 – if you count these things via box office figures – scraping in narrowly behind Mary Poppins Returns. What that reboot had that A Quiet Place didn’t though, was a household name and over six times its production budget.
The script for the entirely successful sci-fi horror was originally born out of an idea had by Scott Beck and Bryan woods during their time spent together in a non-verbal communication class and watching silent films at the University of Iowa. The idea was that this was going to be their Silent Film and its development began way back in the late 90s only recently being picked up in 2017 as a result of the connections the pair had slowly be building.
The script was picked up by Platinum Dunes, Michael Bay’s production company – which has a deal with Paramount for first-look at what they bring in – after John Krasinski helped rewrite the script and signed on as its director in 2017, citing the recent birth of his second child with Emily Blunt as a major influence in the project’s attractiveness. Blunt herself wasn’t interested in the starring role, even after having encouraged her husband to direct the thing, until she read the script and was taken with it. And it was such that by May, 2017, with a budget of approximately $17 mil. production had started in earnest.
The opening ten minutes of the film unravel as a prologue to the rest of the film, taking place a mere eighty-nine days after the creatures (the ones so clearly ripped-off from Primeval) attacked. These ten minutes are as tense as the rest of the film but also set up, in an incredibly efficient manner, the rules to the world, as well as the family dynamics at work and the great, daily risks faced by all involved in performing even the most mundane of tasks – like shopping for medicine and groceries.
It quickly becomes apparent that what the world, but far more importantly for A Quiet Place the Abbott family, is facing is a beast with an inability to see the world but through its hypersensitive hearing. A crucial moment comes early on, when
Most of the world hasn’t fared particularly well, but the Abbotts, led by Patriarch Lee (played by director and co-writer John Krasinski) and Matriarch Evelyn (Emily Blunt), have likely survived so far in part because of Lee’s survivalist tendencies but mostly because they had already adjusted to using ASL, to the silence, for their deaf daughter Regan’s (played by actually deaf-actor Millicent Simmonds) benefit.
The attacks are as brutal as they are quick, one moment someone – like the Abbotts’ four-year-old son, Beau – is there, and the next they’re not, and they’re all brought about by the making of the tiniest of sounds. Quietude is enforced and transgression is punished mercilessly by death.
When Beau, against the orders of his rather regimented father, nabs a noisy plastic space-shuttle and sets it off, he seals his fate and the rest of the family, try as they might to help him, can only watch on in stunned silence as one of those brutish creatures cuts him down. After a cut-to-black and a title card, we’re brought about a year into the future, where the Abbotts are making provisions for the impending birth of their next child.
It’s a shocking moment to open with but it works so well because it simultaneously conceals the sequence’s expository purpose, as well as adds a little bit of payoff to consolidate the feeling of unease inherent in even the most mundane actions that come next. If the sanctity of the life of a child so young isn’t protected, then the safety of a mother and the child she’s carrying is certainly at risk.
Arguably, this is a far cry from the marketing trend I’ve been complaining about recently, wherein films stich on a prologue that for all intents and purposes has no firm relation to the rest of the film and purely exists to sell the film without spoiling the main plot. However, I can see some seeing it as no different and finding my appreciation here slightly hypocritical.
My main defence here is that I consider the first ten minutes of A Quiet Place to latch neatly onto the rest of the film on numerous levels that, say, Army of the Dead, or Spiral, don’t. Firstly, it sets up an emotional context for the Abbotts’ attachment to the unborn child; Evelyn and Lee’s overprotectiveness, Regan’s guilt. Moreover, it necessarily sets up stakes, as I’ve discussed, and establishes the rules to the world. I’d find it difficult to see how the rest of the film could function quite as effectively without the work that is done right at the start here.
It’s the groundwork being laid, the sort of emotional foundation for the peril each character is yet to face. Make no mistake, this isn’t to say that the film doesn’t also succeed in eliciting the more immediate, moment to moment tension a film like this requires – it really does – but this scene, early on, attaches far more import to each set piece than purely momentary tension ever could.
In large part, the success of the film is probably down to its hugely creative use of the situation and the way other elements of the film all play off that central dilemma.
Character constantly plays into the scenario, where emotional beats are raw and painful, but emotional outpouring is invariably prohibited for safety reasons.
Oftentimes the various, completely understandable eruptions of emotion or even just physical pain serve to racket up tensions to an even more scathing degree and when those moments of safety do finally come, when expression is allowed – as when Lee takes middle-child Marcus (Noah Jupe) to a load, flowing river to teach him some things – the release is amazingly cathartic.
The film’s sound design is also to be praised. Obviously, a film like this – as with the recent triumph Sound of Metal – is going to rely on the soundness of its mix, to an almost artisanal level. Every creak and sound means death and the film really plays with this incredibly well in its most tense moments.
But I do have a gripe with the film here. I’ve mentioned Sound of Metal, but I think that film is probably superior to this when it comes to communicating purely through its mix. A large part of that Riz-Ahmed-driven fable of self-discovery arrives through the pockets of silence it creates even when nothing in particular is going on. Krasinski, on the other hand, can’t help but fill every prolonged silence with soundtrack, afraid of boring the audience when we’re not fearing for the protagonist’s lives.
In this area, what I’m hoping we might get from the looming second part is a bit more confidence and emphasis on the internal lives of these characters we’re watching. To explore what it’s like to be forced to listen to nothing, to sit with the feeling of being hunted – whether that means they fill it with music coming in through earbuds or are simply driven a little mad by the cultural void they now exist within.
I think this also has something to do with the pace of the film. For the most part, it’s breakneck – this isn’t to say that every scene is fraught with peril and there’s no downtime. Oddly, a significant part of the film is fairly monotonous, but a combination of that ever-present danger and the small scale of the focus really drive home the sense that everything could fall apart at any second.
And when it does, things move quicky. You’ll rarely be granted a chance to breathe, only surviving on the pockets of that aforementioned catharsis interspersed between set pieces. Add to this the fact that most scenes are terrified of outstaying their welcome and you’ll find yourself rarely checking the remaining duration or asking when the thing will get to the bloody point.
All in all, it’s an incredibly strong outing as a little slice of horror, and perhaps what’s holding it back is that it’s really not much more than that.
All involved give strong performances – especially the child actors, giving heart-breaking glimpses into the terror these kids really must feel after everything they’ve been put through. The direction is water-tight if slightly utilitarian and a little timid at times, but the creativity on display here is really what sells everything. The tension is inspired, feeling akin to something you might see in Hitchcock; an upright nail waiting for a foot, standing in for Hitchcock’s bomb in a suitcase beneath the table.
It’s the type of horror film you can take someone to even if they’re not a fan of the genre. Personally, I think most cinemagoers should give horror more of a go than just the biggest titles on the market at the moment since it’s such a diverse genre, but A Quiet Place does away with the most frustrating of modern conventions to deliver a compelling tale of familial solidarity in the name of survival. I think people have and will appreciate that. I reckon pretty much anyone, perhaps with the exception of the most faint-hearted, will be able to sink their teeth into this and should do before going to see the next installment.
Watched on 31st May 2021