We live in truly interesting times when Michael Bay once slipped up and produced a film that not only lacks spectacular destruction or explosions but, in terms of the number of characters, limited and far from glamorous setting, and other details, resembles a low-budget student film more than a project backed by major Hollywood names and studios. The sci-fi horror A Quiet Place is also an unusual film in that it could literally be called “family-oriented,” given that the two main characters are a husband and wife, portrayed by John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, who are married in real life. Krasinski himself insisted on this arrangement, especially since he was also entrusted with directing, and given his involvement in writing the screenplay, it can be said that this film bears an unusually strong auteur stamp for contemporary Hollywood.
The action takes place in 2020, and the protagonists—or rather, the only characters—are members of the Abbott family, who would otherwise be an average American family were it not for the circumstances that might make them the last American family. Several months earlier, the world had become the target of an invasion by bloodthirsty and seemingly indestructible monsters that managed to wipe out almost all of humanity. The Abbotts avoided this fate because they were among the lucky ones who realised the monsters were blind, meaning that sound attracts them to human targets. Another stroke of luck is that their teenage daughter Regan (Simmonds) is deaf, so the Abbotts had long since learned to communicate using sign language, which proves immensely useful for a family striving to make as little noise as possible and thus avoid drawing attention to themselves. Although they lost their three-year-old son during an expedition, Evelyn (Blunt) and Lee (Krasinski) are expecting another child a year later, having found refuge on a farm they have adapted so that every activity produces as little noise as possible. Rebellious Regan and her younger brother Marcus (Jupe), however, struggle to cope with the monotonous life which, if they let their guard down, could be brutally and bloodily cut short.
Although Bay somehow managed to “scrape together” $17 million for the film (most likely for the special effects used to bring the monsters to life), A Quiet Place represents a triumph of near-unimaginable minimalism for Hollywood. The plot is presented with remarkable economy, devoid of superfluous subplots and complications, and A Quiet Place runs at a brisk 90 minutes. What is particularly interesting is that the film features almost no conventional dialogue, with everything conveyed through gestures and sign language, so by some—perhaps not overly lenient—criteria, this could even be classified as a silent film. On the other hand, the concept is established in an exceptionally convincing and coherent manner—the protagonists don’t speak simply because they are forced to. This, on one hand, poses an exposition problem—explaining to the audience how the world turned into such a horrific place—without, of course, being able to use the protagonists and their dialogue. Krasinski resolves this very skilfully with the opening scene in an abandoned supermarket, where apocalyptic newspaper and tabloid headlines narrate the story of the world’s end, and thanks to Lee’s character being an engineer, he is compelled to make notes on his projects, which include speculations about the monsters and their potential weaknesses.
Given its chamber-piece nature, A Quiet Place is a film carried largely by its actors, and it can be said they have delivered. Emily Blunt could eat far more complex roles for breakfast, and here she portrays Evelyn’s character without any difficulty. However, it can be said she is somewhat overshadowed by her husband, who is brilliant in the role of arguably the best husband and father one could imagine, not just under post-apocalyptic conditions but in general. Lee, whether by accident or design, bears a strong resemblance to Joel’s character from the thematically and tonally similar video game The Last of Us. Simmonds also delivers an exceptional performance, being deaf in real life; although her character is saddled with the ungrateful task of making mistakes without which no horror film, not even such a refined one, could function, she executes it in a way that, despite everything, the audience retains sympathy for Regan and hopes she will somehow survive in the end. Krasinski has also done an excellent job as director, particularly in scenes where tension is skilfully built according to all the rules of the old master Hitchcock. There is, of course, also a rather unconventional ending that is convincing and effective enough not to come across as pretentious.
Although Krasinski has inserted a few somewhat unjustified and unconvincing scenes that detract from A Quiet Place’s perfection, most of the negative criticism this film will receive will be for the wrong reasons, having far more to do with ideological debates and the heated atmosphere in a world threatened by a very different kind of apocalypse. Thus, the authors will be criticised for a lack of “diversity,” i.e., that the protagonists are a white middle-class family, that they promote supposedly outdated “gender roles,” and that they insist on “pro-life” values. What will particularly irk the usual do-gooders is that the Abbotts count firearms among their survival tools, which is enough to brand them as embodiments of “prepper” fantasies, or the equivalent of backward Trump-loving hicks who are supposedly the source of apocalypse in real life. Let us hope the world endures long enough for a time to come when A Quiet Place will be seen as nothing more than a very good sci-fi horror film.
RATING: 8/10 (+++)
(Note: The text in the original Croatian version is available here.)
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