A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place

It took me a while to finally see this movie, but I was very excited to watch it after all of the hype during its theatrical run. I'm also a fan of John Krasinksi and Emily Blunt both together and separate, so all the more reason to be pumped.

The simple premise is a pitch within itself: a horror movie where the monster gets you if you make a sound. Great. What's even better is making it about a family, so there's built-in empathy and an interesting dynamic between these characters who aren't allowed to speak. It's also perfect for the film medium, because the storytelling has to be almost entirely visual. These elements automatically allow the movie to enter the "worth watching" category.

That being said, it never goes much deeper than that.

Not that it really needs to, it can coast off that premise for the whole movie, and that's exactly what it does, but this had the potential to be a modern classic.

For one thing, the cinematography is pretty standard. It's certainly not bad, and there's even a few great images (Emily Blunt in the water with the red light reflecting off her face comes to mind) but the shot composition and camerawork aren't very memorable overall. This is an opportunity for Hitchcock-level visual storytelling, and instead it's shot in a pretty standard way.

The family is also not that particularly interesting because there's little to no drama happening between them. Modern horror films like Hereditary and The Witch do a brilliant job of having an outside force drive a family apart. This could've been a family drama/horror on par with The Shining if they had seen the advantages of going in that direction. In a way this is sort of a moot point though, because the route they chose instead is a more Spielberg-style family that loves each other and has to overcome the obstacle together, like Poltergeist or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This direction is totally viable, but even then the family feels a little bland. There's never a moment where they laugh together (possibly because they'd die) or really connect at all. It's sort of brushed-over that the father and the daughter have a hard time communicating, and there's hardly any connection at all between the mother and her children. There's a nice moment where the father and mother dance together and share headphones (which only made me think of the same moment between Jim and Pam in The Office, especially since Jim was there again) but there needed to be a few more moments like that for me to believe them as a family.

Everyone's already gone into detail on the issues with what makes sound and what doesn't in this movie, and honestly it never really distracted me. I like how much thought they put into how they'd make sure not to make noise, and anything they oversaw I oversaw as well.

Spoilers.

The aliens aren't very creative or memorable. The plates on their face are something different, but their design is far too busy. Great sci-fi creatures like the Xenomorph or the Predator are iconic because they're simple and recognizable even through silhouette. If I saw the Quiet Place creatures in silhouette I would probably get it mistaken with the Demogorgons from Stranger Things or the aliens in Signs. The only truly distinct feature they have is their praying mantis arms, but it's not enough to save them from being forgettable.

My only real other hard issues is that the ending was dumb. It's a Spielberg/Shyamalan-esque sci-fi thriller that all of a sudden becomes an action movie in the last five seconds. Emily Blunt cocks a shotgun and they cut to credits. Seeing "Produced by Michael Bay" easily justified it for me, but it's still pretty insane that they chose to end on that note. Based on the tone that the film had set up, it would make more sense for John Krasinski to overcome the aliens and have the family drive away to wherever their next home may be. It's not as tragic and it's not exactly good, but it fits the tone better. If it's better to have a darker ending then maybe it ends with all of them hiding in a hole, just trying to out-wait the creatures. Whatever it is, it just can't end like a completely different movie.

There's plenty of things I liked about the movie though. The acting, sound design, production design, and cinematography are all very good, just not as good as they had the potential to be due to the brilliant premise. It's still got plenty of intense and emotional moments and I recommend going to see it, just know that it's maybe not as good as everyone was saying it was when it was in theaters.