Review: A Quiet Place
Everyone has had their moment when they've been told that they look like a famous celebrity. For me, that celebrity is usually John Krasinski, most famous for his role of Jim in The Office. After the success of his first film, I can only imagine I'll get that comparison more, and if the rest of his career follows the path set out by A Quiet Place, I won't mind it.
Despite its tag and marketing, A Quiet Place isn't really a horror film, but more like a post-apocalyptic survival movie with an emphasis on the struggle to maintain normalcy and love within a family that can't make a sound and can only speak through sign language. This is the genius of the film. Almost no time is explicitly spent to explain why the monsters are there or what happened to create the situation the family is in, and there doesn't need to be. The opening scene shows the family raiding an abandoned grocery store in what looks to be a recently-made ghost town. Painstaking care is shown in trying to commit every action with the utmost silence. A jar almost falls to the ground and the collective relief of each individual when it doesn't tells you how serious such a simple mistake would be to the family. The first 10 minutes of the movie are a hyper-efficient display of how to set up a plot and let the audience know what the stakes and setting are, literally without saying a word.
The best films, instead of telling you what's going on, will show you, and that's what A Quiet Place excels in. By focusing on the tiny moments within the family and the way they go about their days in silence, you learn everything you need to know about this universe and the dynamics of each person to the next. Meanwhile, you get to enjoy the ride the whole way as the film pieces together these details bit by bit in a perfectly slow buildup of action and monster reveals. The pacing of this movie is perfect, balancing out the silent and slow moments of normalcy with the tension of the constant threat that lurks behind every sound a decibal too loud. For a movie filled with enough tension to exhaust you and enough silence to bore you, it's a great balancing act to keep these two aspects playing with each other the entire way, and it's amazing how well this is executed considering this is Krasinski's first film.
A Quiet Place is an example of a film that takes a relatively simple concept and makes a great movie out of exploring every aspect of it with thought and care. You don't need some convoluted explanation for why the monsters are there, or an exploration of the ways these monsters have impacted the world at large. You just need to show how fucking crazy it would be to raise a family in a world where you're constantly on alert and in silence. A Quiet Place does that to the best of its ability, and it makes for a ride that's fun, scary, and moving. Oh yeah, and Emily Blunt gives a fantastic performance and steals the movie any time she's on screen. I'll take it as a compliment to be compared to Krasinski.
Rating: Pretty Goddamn Impressive