A Quiet Place

2018 sci-fi horror movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A family plays a really intense version of the quiet game.

I'm actually growing to like this movie more the more I think about it. Like all horror movies, I try to find the subtext. These sorts of sci-fi movie critters don't actually exist, so there must be something else--something real but abstract--that the humans are scared of in these movies. It's so obvious what this one is about that I don't know why it didn't hit me on the way home from the theater. This is very much a movie about family, raising children, loss, and (perhaps ironically) communication between parents and children. For a movie with very little dialogue, it really does say a lot about the importance of communication in raising your offspring.

This really works as a horror movie. It does it with some typical jump scares, ones complete with loud noises or screeching strings, and it does it with a gimmick. Some of the former ones effectively made theater patrons jump, probably more noticeably with a movie that was so quiet at times, and the latter can be forgiven because it is used so effectively. This is a technically brilliant horror film. The creature design is the most menacing since maybe Alien, the set pieces are intricately designed and shot to bring out every ounce of possible tension, the attention to details in the limited settings is terrific, and the use of sound is just about perfect. This may have a little too much score for my taste, but I can't remember a movie that used sound so well. Every floorboard creek resonated in that theater, and the sound design had a mostly full theater holding its collective breath so that we didn't get that guy from The Office and his family killed.

Krasinski is fine, hitting all the right notes as an everyman, but the kids and Emily Blunt are incredible. Blunt has a range of emotions to play around with here, and the way she manages to deliver them all while being so still is stunning. Millicent Simmonds, that girl from Wonderstruck, and Noah Jupe are both great, too. But this is really Blunt's movie to shine in, and she nails it, right down to her last shot of the movie.

As good as the sound design is, my favorite thing might be the pacing and the unique storytelling. This movie has almost no exposition at all, and it's a better story because of it. We never find out why the monsters are here, and we're only gradually given clues along the way about this family and the world's situation. Just as the monsters are only revealed to us piece by piece before finally being shown in all their glory, we're fed the story in the same way. Inferences have to be made, but there are more than enough clues to make it easy. This isn't a thinking man's movie at all. It's just simple storytelling with almost all of the fat removed so that the viewer can enjoy the thrills. Are there plot holes and questions that are left unanswered? Oh, yeah. But when a movie is pieced together so well and has a little something to say about how scary it is raising children in a terrifying world, you can almost forgive them.

But seriously, how is there that much corn?

There's one scene featuring a Neil Young song that I want to mention. He strolls out of a silo playing a banjo and singing "Cinnamon Girl" before a monster pops out of a cornfield and decapitates him. I thought the scene was completely unnecessary.