Well,
Prime strikes again. This is the second
time this month a movie I was going to watch mysteriously became
“Unavailable”. Well, “unavailable” as
in, “Not Included with Prime”. I’m
sorry, I like Adam Ant as much as the next guy, but if you think I’m going to
pay $3.99 for Spellcaster, you got another think coming. (Luckily, it’s available for free on Tubi, so
I’m sure I’ll watch it eventually.) I
was going to save A Quiet Place for November’s horror movie watching project,
Halloween Hangover, but I felt that after so many bad movies I’ve watched this
month, I needed a break. As it turns
out, this was just the palette cleanser I was looking for.
The
premise is deceptively simple. Creatures
who hunt using sound have pretty much wiped out the population of a small
town. John Krasinski and Emily Blunt
hold down the fort with their children, hunting and gathering in total silence,
communicating only via sign language.
That’s
all I’ll say. Although according to the
box office reports, you all saw this one way before I did. It’s just pretty amazing that Krasinski, who
also directed was able to squeeze so much suspense, atmosphere, and dread with
seemingly so little. In lesser hands,
the suspense would’ve solely come from people dropping stuff and then trying to
remain perfectly quiet. Well, there is
some of that, but the movie really cooks when its dealing with its characters’
guilt, fear, and impending motherhood. Who
knew Jim from The Office was a born filmmaker?
I
can’t say it’s perfect. People shush
each other so often that it becomes comical after a while. You could almost play a drinking game every
time someone raises their finger to their lips and be in a coma before the
movie’s over. The monsters are also kind
of shitty too as they look like something out of a Resident Evil PS2 game.
Those
are minor quibbles. Krasinski delivers
three or four memorable suspense-filled sequences of the family in peril. I mean the plot sounds like something M.
Night Shyamalan would cook up, only he’d be too worried trying to make a
“twist” to it that he’d forget to bring on the actual scares. Luckily for us, Krasinski is no M. Night.
I
particularly liked the world-building aspects.
I love survivalist horror, and this flick presents a unique spin on that
tried-and-true subgenre. It also clocks
in at a lean and mean ninety minutes, meaning it’s all killer and no
filler.
All
in all, A Quiet Place is worth making a ruckus about.
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