A Quiet Place: Shut - the - fuck - up

Plot

The Road (Cormac McCarthy) meets Alien (Ridley Scott).

This place is reminiscent of McCarthy’s dystopia and clearly pays tribute to Scott’s spikey, drooling, terrifying monster. Distant cousins for sure.

Here the beasts are blind and, we can only surmise, totally deprived of the sense of smell as well. As far as touch goes, we do know they slice, chop, carve and stab like your good old neighborhood butcher without the apron or the moustache, only much faster and they eat all they cut.

So how do they hunt if they can’t see or smell? Well, they can hear a needle drop which means that humans literally walk on eggshells. Stealth is life. The opposite is the rule.

On that premise a family of five has obviously learnt how to avoid being turned into minced meat and gotten quite organized. But there is only so much you can do to change and adapt. Some things in human nature remain, otherwise what’s the point of surviving? Love is in the air. And love is noisy…

Dashometer

A Quiet Place does not pretend to reinvent the wheel. It is transparent and graceful in its many reference. The themes are well known and have been thoroughly explored before. So why does the film stand out? Because of the use of silence in its premise that opens the door to an interesting experience as a spectator. In an actual theatre, in the dark, the doubly surround blasting… white noise! The wind. The sound of the breathing. Suddenly every “real life” noise in the theatre becomes intrusive and uncomfortable… people eating popcorn, fidgeting in their seat, whispering… The ominous promise of the silence is therefore emphasized by the immediate realization of our own inability to be perfectly still and silent. After ten minutes, save for the usual idiot who pathologically craves attention, the tension is palpable in the room.

Technically, the use of silence in the film is well done though we can’t help but thinking that the creators of the sonic canvas of a movie such as Gravity could have raised the bar.

As the story progresses, the monster, the fantastic element of the film fades away. It is reduced to the condition of a mere narrative tool. Throwback to a few a time when the human condition was all about survival. The Aliens could be mountain lions or grizzlies, which was worse because those beasts can smell you. Point is, the drive remains the same. Question is then: at which point the fiction of family and love became part of the equation? And now that we don’t have to constantly fight for our lives what space has it taken in our existence?

So in the context of a fall from our modern Eden, our beloved but undisciplined child, our cherished but rebellious teenagers are liabilities. Director/actor Jon Krasinski does a terrific job at setting the stage and upping the stakes. After 13 Hours he confirm that he can exhale a unique brand of depth and intensity. Emily Blunt is flawless as usual. Her potential and talent seem endless.

A special mention goes to the young Millicent Simmonds, a deaf actress masterfully playing the eldest child, a deaf girl grappling with altogether normal teenager confusion and self-centered, self-induced torments on top of the guilt she experiences about the loss of her youngest brother.

And there lies the only shortcoming of the film. The presence of a deaf character, a struggling rebellious teenager (which reminds us of Rinko Kikuchi’s character in Alejandro Iñarittu’s Babel), held a lot of potential in this dystopian predicament. From the first scene it is clear that she has a specific function in the story, the unfolding of which is a bit of a anti-climax. The tension with her father and her unique connection with the monster deserved more focus.

This said, A Quiet Place is definitely delivers and scores. To be seen in a theater though. So get your ticket, grab your popcorn and remember to shut – the – fuck – up!