Review: A Quiet Place
After two fairly unremarkable outings in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and The Hollars, actor John Krasinski finally establishes his directorial credentials with the suspenseful horror drama, A Quiet Place.
The film begins on Day 89 in a post-apocalyptic world where silence seems key to survival. A family is seen tiptoeing barefoot through an abandoned grocery store, scavenging for food and supplies. The youngest boy is taken with a toy rocket, which his father Lee (John Krasinski) gently refuses to let him have. His deaf older sister Regan (Millicent Simmonds), seeing her brother's disappointment and knowing that their father has taken out the rocket's batteries, hands the toy to him. Unbeknownst to her, her brother has put the batteries back in the rocket. As the family make their way home, they're startled by the sounds of the toy piercing the air. The mother Evelyn (Emily Blunt) watches in terror as her her husband races to their son. Yet it's too late. A creature sprints over and eviscerates the boy before Lee can reach him.
One year later, the family has moved on though not quite. Regan still believes herself responsible for her younger brother's death and there's a tension between her and Lee, who insists that it was in no way her fault. Lee's relationship with Regan and his repeated failure to fix the hearing aid connected to her cochlear implant are not the only complications on the home front. Evelyn is heavily pregnant and, whilst Lee has been building a safe room based on his research that water can help mask sounds, there's no way of truly knowing whether or not their baby will make it past its first wail.
It may be worth noting that director Michael Bay serves as one of the film's producers if only because there are certain moments - the usual false scare or two, that final image that is a tad too hokey though, admittedly, it is sure to elicit a rousing cheer from the audience - that seem more Bay than Krasinski. They're especially jarring since they are so at odds with the rest of the film, which as such a simplicity and sophistication in its storytelling and execution despite the number of narrative contrivances and lapses in logic. Whilst Krasinski and co-screenwriters Bryan Woods and Scott Beck don't exactly do anything overly ingenious or revolutionary with the genre, they do cleverly lean in to the gimmick of their premise, utilising sound or the lack thereof in such a way that it is more terrifying than the actual creatures themselves.
Krasinski stages several nerve-shredding sequences with effective economy and visual flair. The passage where Evelyn goes into labour, having already attracted the creature's attention when she knocked over a picture frame after stepping on a nail may be the film's predictable highlight, yet Krasinski mostly sidesteps the usual cheap shocks to instead add further layers of suspense on an already fraught situation. Most of all, he never loses sight of the film's underlying theme - how can parents protect their children from the dangers of the world - which is the fear that every parent has to live with for all of their lives.
A Quiet Place
Directed by: John Krasinski
Written by: Bryan Woods, Scott Beck, John Krasinski
Starring: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe
