Review of A Quiet Place (2016) by Jesse O — 22 Aug 2018

There's really very few horror movies these days where I legitimately go 'Hmmm, I'm surprised that no one thought of that before'. And I just mean conceptually speaking, because Get Out, while one of the most original horror movies in a long time, was also a product of how Jordan Peele perceived liberal racism.

It was a movie that wouldn't have been possible without the United States' institutionalized racism. But the whole concept of people inhabiting others' bodies, and that's what where I'm gonna leave it, has been around for a while.

It's just how Get Out skillfully used that to create a socially relevant and significant horror movie that made it as incredible as it was. What I mean by concept, I just mean that the entire movie, barring a few exceptions, is completely silent.

The family communicates through sign language since, any significant noise they make, is picked up by these monsters that hunts by sound due to hypersensitive hearing that allows them to pick up on relatively minor sounds from incredibly far away.

And this is a concept that horror movies play with all the time, right? Where, as an example, the villains/monster are hunting down our lead characters and they're close so, naturally, the lead characters have to be as quiet as possible or else risk giving away their position.

But, in most horror movies, this is contained to, say, one scene. Not in this movie, there's a reason why this is called A Quiet Place. Being silent is of the utmost importance or else, as the beginning of the film showed, it's game over, man, game over.

Seriously though, they start off the film explaining how dangerous making loud noises can be, as Lee and Evelyn's youngest, Beau, is killed by the monster after he plays with a shuttle that, of course, makes a sound as it's 'lifting off'.

Lee, initially, told (through Americal Sign Language) Beau to leave the toy behind as it makes too much noise. Lee removed the batteries and left it on the shelf. Regan, who's deaf, gave the toy back to her brother, minus the batteries, which Beau picked up himself.

That's what leads to Beau's death and, really, what drives the main narrative arc forward. The relationship between Lee and Regan, as Regan, who blames herself for what happened, believes her father also blames her for Beau's death and Lee, perhaps unknowingly, has distanced himself from Regan.

But, having watched the film, I think that distance between Lee and Regan is more Lee feeling like he failed at protecting one of his children. That relationship is really the emotional core of the movie.

As I mentioned, most of the film's storytelling is told through visuals, sign language and actions. And, to me, that's even more impressive, because the film does have a surprising amount of depth.

In terms of its characters, the world they inhabit, the extraterrestrial monsters that hunt them. The world is very much lived-in and established and, again, they do all this without the use of conventional dialogue.

If there's more than 200 words of actual spoken dialogue in this movie, it's probably still too much. But, the thing is that these spoken words give additional depth to these characters and more of an insight into how they've gotten to the point they are.

Oh, I also forgot to say that Evelyn is pregnant. She's pregnant in a world where you cannot make a sound or instantly be hunted down by these beings. Naturally, she gives birth during the more tense moments of the flick.

So, yea, things go from bad to worse in this movie. Ultimately, the movie works as a metaphor for how terrifying parenthood can be, and this has been confirmed by John Krasinski himself, and how terrifying the whole thing can be, especially if you're a new parent as to how you're gonna guide this child through to adulthood, how you're gonna keep him or her safe, how you're gonna raise them and teach them the necessary tools in order to take care of themselves when they grow to be adults.

This movie conveys all of that and more. While the emotional core of the film is Lee and Regan's relationship, as a whole, the movie also deals with the lengths these parents go to to keep their children from harm.

As far as horror is concerned, honestly, I feel like the characters come first and the horror second. And, quite frankly, that's the way that it makes sense to do it. Because if you're not attached to these characters, if you don't care for them or if you're indifferent to them, then you're just not gonna give a fuck about them when, eventually, the monster(s) starts hunting them down and they have to use everything at their disposal to avoid them.

What I like about this movie is that while, ultimately, they do find a way to get rid of these monsters, most of the movie is just the Abbot family attempting to just survive the onslaught. It's not about fighting back to them, it's about making it one more day without an incident.

The film establishes this early on with how they go about their daily routine. Everything about their routine is about being as careful as humanly possible and making as little noise as they possibly can.

I like that, the characters are always on the defensive. The monster itself is treated as a threat. The thing about this movie is that it, very much, reminds me of the first Alien movie in how they handle the appearance of the aliens and how threatening they actually are.

Granted, in the original alien, there's only one large xenomorph. Though, again, in this case, there's only one alien hunting the movie down, before the appearance of two more just at the end of the movie and you don't get to see what the remaining of the Abbot family do to them.

This is why a sequel doesn't really make sense. Like how do you continue from where this movie left off. The Abbot family, through Regan, find out that piercing feedback, due to their hypersenstive hearing, drives them nuts.

This opens them up to an attack. You know what the Abbot family are going to do to the two others that are heading their way, how do you build a sequel out of that? Unless it's like Cloverfield and they tell another story from a different perspective.

But, to me, the thing about Cloverfield is that you can tell different types of stories within the same universe since that movie clearly exists in the sci-fi realm. While this, obviously, has sci-fi elements with the monsters, I feel that this exists more in the real world as opposed to a world where anything can happen.

I just don't want the sequel to be told from a different perspective but, essentially, be the same thing as this movie. Because we already got this movie and it was already pretty damn great. I don't need to see the same thing from a different perspective.

If there's a sequel, it should be something new and fresh. Just as this movie was new and fresh. So, yea, I thought this was a great movie. I just liked how original it was, how it developed its world that's full of visual storytelling and subtext, strong character development with an emotionally satisfying and resonant narrative on top of excellent acting from the entire cast.

I can't complain about this movie in the slightest and I would highly recommend this because this isn't just a great horror movie, it's a great movie, period. This movie and Get Out is part of a new wave of horror that pushes the boundaries of what the genre can be and I am all for it.