[star rating=”3″] A QUIET PLACE. Directed by John Krasinski. With Emily Blunt, John Krasinski and Millicent Simmonds.
MEGAN FURNISS reviews
I always knew there was no way I was going to be able to watch this movie in a theatre and I would have to do it at home, with the complete control of being able to turn it off, make some tea, and go back to it only if I was sure I could face it. Last night was that time. We had discussed it, negotiated the terms, created safe words. We were going to try.
A Quiet Place is less a horror movie than a movie deliberately made to create the most tension possible. The plot – post invasion, survivors in general, and one family in particular, have to keep utterly quiet because there are giant goggos who are sound super-sensitive and attack anything that makes a noise. It’s pretty rough going. Every single sound has consequences.
As the movie started I said out loud, to dispel my own shoulder numbing tension: “American small towns always look so quaint and artistic.” Fall trees flame red, shop fronts and main streets look like where you want to spend your retirement. Until you notice the collection of leaves, the stationary cars, the stillness. This stillness sets up how it is going to be for the movie; where the family speak in pigeon sign language (luckily, they had some experience of that because the daughter is deaf) and whisper only when other sounds are louder.
I was pretty tense. The monsters are craftily not seen in their entirety for the whole first half of the movie. They zap in and slash whenever there is a sound. It all gets messy when mom is left on her own and has a baby. I don’t want to go into detail here, but, yes, that is the actual plot.
Giant holes in A Quiet Place
But this movie has giant holes that not even the terrifying silence can fill. It is one of those post event movies where the family unit has to survive in isolation. And a movie centred around two adults and two children (there should be more) is a little boring, even though it is 100% full of tension. Stupid things occupied my mind when I should have been thinking about other stuff. Like, where did this family, on day 487 after the invasion, get all their lovely clothes? The kids had grown in that year and a half. Where did the cute denim jacket and lovely warm jersey appear from on this isolated farm in the American woodland?
And then, as per every horror movie recipe, the man has to take his unwilling son off for an experience in survival, leaving his PREGNANT wife and furious DEAF daughter at home. Come on. Gimme a break! I didn’t stop watching but I did stop caring, a little bit.
Then the goggos. Why do all alien/insectile goggos in the movies have those weird, flower opening faces with those drippy, slashy teeth? Oh for a fresh, non-giant prawn take on the goggos.
That said, I enjoyed the styling of the “hidden spot” in the woods, and the red-light warning signals. And Emily Blunt, who has perfected the long, silent wistful stare.
But, was A Quiet Place worth my own hysterical hype and anxiety? No.
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