Movie Review — A Quiet Place
I don’t know what it is, but for some reason we now have two springs in a row where novice directors knock it out of the park with fantastically executed thrillers. Last year, first-time film director Jordan Peele made the brilliant movie Get Out. This year, it is John Krasinski with A Quiet Place. While not as good as Get Out, A Quiet Place is still well crafted and wonderfully acted. I don’t know how timeless this movie is, but it is an excellent springboard for a more mainstream presence for Krasinski’s directing career.
After the slew of bad-bad-not-very-good-awful horror movies that slum it up each year, it is nice to know that there are some people who know how to make a good, suspenseful movie without using jump scares as their only crutch. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with filmmaking knows that Alfred Hitchcock figured out the science behind suspense half a century ago. And yet, most modern movies seem to have never even heard of Hitchcock.
A Quiet Place takes many cues from classic Hitchcock, but keeps the story much more focused and simple. The movie is exactly what the trailers show: a small story about a small family trying to make it on their own in a world where any sound too loud will get you killed. The movie’s entire setting takes place almost entirely on the farm the family lives on. The plot is focused on them trying to survive the night that the mother (Emily Blunt) gives birth to their next child. And yet, with little else going on, each scene is dripping with suspense since at any moment on missed step can end in extinction.
If the movie were to have one weakness, it would be how overly simple everything is. The twist in the third act is not only literally spelled out on a whiteboard, but was so obvious that I had wondered how it was possible this twist never occurred before the events of the movie. The family’s dynamic is also fairly shallow, since everyone is a saint and their internal conflicts are hardly an inconvenience. Like, the son is established as being a coward, and yet his cowardice never really results in anything of consequence. It serves as more of a stumbling block and less of a hurdle. Still, the weaknesses cannot detract from the genuinely thrilling experience that A Quiet Place delivers.
I just wish that the more suspenseful setpieces weren’t spoiled by the trailers and movie posters.
With the same tone and intensity of Jurassic Park, but the post-apocalyptic feel of I am Legend, A Quiet Place sits strongly as one of the best scary movies in recent years. I still expect it might end up as one of those movies you remember really liking but never get around to revisiting. It is still worth seeing and I recommend it for anyone eager for a good startling.