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A Quiet Place Review

March 10, 2018 | Posted by Ashish
A Quiet Place Image Credit: Paramount Pictures
8.5
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A Quiet Place Review  

Director: John Krasinski
Written By: Bryan Woods, Scott Beck, John Krasinski
Starring: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Noah Jupe, Millicent Simmonds

After his new film, A Quiet Place, opened the 2018 SXSW Film Festival to long lines and raucous applause, John Krasinski (best known as Jim from The Office) talked about the fear many parents face, particularly with the political climate we find ourselves in, about letting their children out into an unstable world and not being able to protect them forever. A Quiet Place explores this fear using a fantastic allegory that sets up a perfect movie gimmick tailor made to serve up thrills, jumps, and seemingly endless tension.

Set in a future post-apocalyptic world where mysterious creatures/aliens with no vision but super hearing roam the countryside waiting for humans to make a sound louder than a whisper, and when they do, they dash onto the scene and devour them quickly. We see this world through one entirely nameless family played by John Krasinski, his wife (Emily Blunt), and their children (one of whom is deaf), who must communicate using sign language and take tedious precautions to avoid making any noise.

Screenwriters are usually taught early on to try to not use dialogue as a crutch, and instead focus on telling a story through images and acting. A Quiet Place is a perfect example of why. With a premise that forces silence, and playing on the fact that people generally remain pretty silent in a theater, the atmosphere the film is able to produce is nail-biting, with every sound landing with so much more weight and tension due to the enormous stretches of silence, and every look the characters give being packed with emotion. The audience begins to react to almost any sound at all, or any look a character gives that hints at making a sound, and the sense of dread this creates is marvelous. The film opens with a heart-pounding and emotionally wrenching sequence and never really lets up, a testament to the direction that a film with such little dialogue is able to maintain so much momentum throughout.

Krasinski is able to tip-toe the audience along as he thoughtfully executes fairly standard horror setups with tremendous precision, creating superb suspense and sprinkling in new wrinkles often enough to keep things fresh and continuously ratchet up the anxious fun. He may go overboard at times with the jump scares – the atmosphere of the film is full of so much dread that he probably could have trusted it more at times – but the sense of foreboding that builds is special. Some may get flashbacks to M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs during a few moments, but this is a much more satisfying film in every way.

The creature design is also very well done (sort of a mash-up of past iconic movie creatures with a few twists), with Krasinski putting them in close proximity to characters in tiny spaces (remember, they can’t see) and cleverly ramping each encounter up with a new gimmick. Some may quibble with Krasinski not leaving enough mystery to the creatures and getting as up close and personal to them as he does, but they are so well executed that it still works well.

The silence gimmick also allows the dialogue, which is melodramatic and preachy at times, to not become distracting from what is the film’s real villain – noise, while allowing the limited-but-well-used score to set in and add emotional resonance when needed. Most viewers will catch on to the “twist” in this film before the intended moment, but it doesn’t take away from the fun.

A film that can’t rely on dialogue has to rely even more on its cast, and Emily Blunt is fantastic throughout, balancing the fear, frustration, strength and longing of a mother trying to protect her children in impossible circumstances. Krasinski’s role is fairly limited but well-executed, largely because of his extremely emotive face that made him a star in The Office, and he is able to get tremendous performances out of his child actors, particularly Simmonds. The family quickly establishes itself as a three-dimensional, believable, and likable unit worth rooting for.

One of the film’s more interesting themes, and what sets it apart from other isolation-based horror films, is the portrayal of “traditional” family values where the inability to talk or make noise leads these characters to live in a somewhat old-fashioned style where the family eats dinner together, prays together, and the children play monopoly instead of staring at their phones. This simple way of life, centered around these people working together and engaged with each other, feels nice for awhile before we’re reminded of the circumstances they’re living in, leaving the audience to ponder if it would ever be possible to let go of our noise addiction, even just a little bit, unless forced to by life-threatening circumstances. This film turns noise into a monster to be feared, and it becomes fascinating to watch as the audience soon begins to react with anxiety and dread for even the faintest of sounds and how amplified and terrifying noise becomes as we quickly learn to associate it with danger and death.

A Quiet Place is certainly Krasinski’s best film as a director, and a sure-fire crowd pleaser that is one of the most fun movies I’ve seen in some time. It’s fresh, well executed, beautifully shot, powerfully acted, and an extremely satisfying thriller.

8.5
The final score: review Very Good
The 411
John Krasinski's A Quiet Place is a superbly executed horror thriller that delivers endless dread, tension, suspense, and fun, with enough fresh wrinkles for even the most savvy of horror fans.
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