A Reel Review: A QUIET PLACE

John Krasinski’s A QUIET PLACE is a film that crosses many genres. It is a horror flick, action movie, and family drama…sprinkled with a dash of old-school monster movies and a pinch of science fiction. It’s a lot to juggle for a seasoned filmmaker, and even more for someone making his only his third feature film.  

The year is 2020, and humanity has been nearly wiped out by blind aliens with super-hearing. Lee Abbot (Krasinksi), and his pregnant wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt), scratch out a silent life of survival with their deaf daughter Regan (Millicent), and son Marcus (Noah Jupe).

A QUIET PLACE takes place just over a year, and in the early goings does great work in setting up the scenario. There are three creatures in the immediate area, and the family has to go through great lengths to keep quiet…for any sort of noise will draw the hungry and bloodthirsty monsters out of hiding; lengths such as always speaking in a whisper or sign language, always walking barefoot, pouring sand on pathways, and even cooking food under the floorboards to suppress the sound. Krasinski shows the hard life that the family is enduring, and the payoff comes in great doses when things go wrong and draws the creatures to dinner.

Once the monsters do show (they are in quick glimpses early, before going full reveal), it becomes a game of hide-and-seek with a blind creature and a terrified human who shouldn’t make a sound. The predicaments that Krasinski puts his characters in are a terrific build-up of tension; Evelyn going into labor with a creature in the room makes for one of the most terrifying scenes ever constructed, and the resolutions the characters find are clever and never come out of left field.

There’s not a lot of plot to the film, as most of its business is spent as a survival tale. With so little dialogue present and sub-titled sign language, there’s not much opportunity to dig deep into the characters. The idea seems to be that family love is all that matters here, and it works, but it does seem that things could have gone a little deeper in places.

Krasinski directs a great looking film, and the editing is sharp as a monster-claw; jump-scares are plenty and well-timed. The sound-editing and mixing is tremendous; from the shrieks of the aliens to the lightest footstep. For a film that is all about sound, it captures every creak perfectly. The creatures come to life via some effective CGI, and their design is grotesque and horrifying.

Acting is tremendous. Krasinski has a lot of heavy lifting to do in front of and behind the camera, and he handles the pressure very well. Emily Blunt winds up stealing the show; her labor scene while hiding from a creature is tremendously acted and more proof of how great she really is. The younger cast all handle their roles very well.

The bulk of A QUIET PLACE involves only the Abbot family, and only gives slight hints to what has been happening in other parts of the world. The resolution against the invaders is clever and makes sense, and although it doesn’t quite save the world right away, it does give humanity hope. Krasinski has delivered a gem of a film here, one that thrills and scares but also impresses with the amount of thought that has gone into the script and on the set. For a movie with so little dialogue, A QUIET PLACE gives us a lot to talk about.

BOTTOM LINE: See it