The directorial debut of John Krasinski, best known for his role as Jim Halpert in the American version of “The Office” series, attract attention. The lack of originality of the horror stories with the over-use of mindless slaughter and blood resulted that every story with a trace of originality is greeted with enthusiasm. Finally, after a long time, we got an authentic thriller horror movie, or suspense survival horror movie.
This genre is actually completely extinct with the first “Alien” and “Predator” and some other similar film, whose essence and the backbone of the film was to create primarily an atmosphere that would keep the viewer on a thin wick for almost most of the movie.
But the question is not how original is the film, but how much it manages to capitalize on the original elements in its story?
Unfortunately – not enough.
“A Quiet Place ” catches the viewer with an interesting and scary premise.
How to survive a deadly enemy in grave silence, sneaking around, communicating in sign language, living in endless fear?
By itself, the claustrophobia of the situation is intriguing but still insufficient to allow a film action to be built solely on it. Identifying this situation is not enough without a faithful and consistent narrative.
Unfortunately, the story full of illogicality distracts from the good idea so the viewer mostly thinking about the omissions rather than focusing on the film itself and thought of the movie idea.
But the movie also has its bright elements. One of them is definitely – acting.
The two main focuses are a real-life romantic couple – Emily Blunt and the aforementioned John Krasinski. The Blunt-Krasinski duo showed how faithful the closeness between a real love couple looks to the movie screen in the roles of a fictitious couple.
The main group we follow in film is Abbott family (pregnant wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt), husband Lee (John Krasinski), deaf daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds), and two brothers Marcus (Noah Jupe) and Beau (Cade Woodward)), who lives in an area with creatures that use sound to hunt their prey. Their hearing is super-sensitive, so it’s imperative to be as quiet as possible in order to survive. The family has developed a survival system, and they have several goals in mind: developing a good enough Regan hearing aid, giving birth to a child without creatures killing them, and teaching the kids the basics of survival.
In addition to fear of the monsters, with the family we go through various situations of their new life, such as losing their loved ones, creating silence, classic charms with children and preparation for the birth of a child. The birth of a child means that death is approaching because how to be quiet in an environment that does not suffer from any sounds.
We can separate the movie thematically into two different parts. The first part falls into the category of thriller genre, because the emphasis is not on causing fear in the viewer but on the discomfort through depicting the tension and lifestyle of the family in abnormal circumstances. The life in fear and the pressure of survival are portrayed faithfully for the most part thanks to the quality performance of the cast. This part of the film is a bit slow, although that is not bad in itself, as it has created a great atmosphere for the film.
A myriad of details – like barefoot walking, removing batteries from the gadgets to accidentally ignite, open house doors, marking on parquet floors to avoid creaking, etc. – evokes a situation, and breaking the rules and accidental noise creates creeps within the realization that our species is no longer a safe hunter but a fragile hunter.
The last half hour of the movie is a classic horror where the situation escalates. The family goes through traumatic experiences and repeated attacks by creatures and tries to survive in all ways.
The final part of the movie goes into haunting very much like the one from “Alien” movie, and there is no longer any development of horror or jump scars, but rather a direct confrontation with creatures
Krasinski understood something that the vast majority of horror film directors never understand. One of the key tricks is not to portray a monster / attacker and thus give the viewer a sense of suspense, mystery and anticipation. Those elements that Spielberg in “Jaws” captured fantastically are also applied on this movie and Krasinski should be congratulated on that..
However, despite the overwhelming lack of “realism” of the narrative, the illogicality in the story are simply too great to ignore.
But well, this is primarily a horror survival movie, so logic aside.
“A Quiet Place ” is a worth and a solid first film made by a directorial debut with a solid idea, clichéd performance and the final average product. For all of you who love real thriller horror where there’s not much bloodshed and nerve cameras and screaming – this is the movie for you.
