Day 89. Somewhere in the USA, in an old abandoned town, the Abbotts, a family of five is scouring through a grocery store. But there's something wrong with this scene the environment. It's like all the residents of this town just vanished, and there's nobody around except them. Cars left in the street, lamp posts and traffic lights laying in dust. It's like everybody just got up and left.
The littlest of them is Beau. He too is scouring the shop, in search of something to play with, a toy perhaps. There it is! The space shuttle challengers toy replica. In a playful mind, little Beau is trying to grab it with his tiny hands. It's too hard to reach up on the shelves, and it slips out starting to slowly fall to the ground. His older sister, Regan jumps forward and catches it midair like it's some kind of a sound grenade. Hinting at the fact that there's something wrong with this world. And its something to do with sound.
When going out of the shop, their father lee takes it from Beau, removes its batteries, and tells him in sign language that he can't have it, it's too dangerous and leaves it atop a desk.
While no one is looking, Beau still takes it.
Going back home from the shop, the Abbots follow a straight line in the sand, barefoot, so that their footsteps don't make any sound. Lee at the front with Marcus, Evelyn second with all the groceries, Regan and then little Beau.
A wasteland-looking short bridge is on their way back to home. While crossing it, lee hears a sound coming from the back, and its the toy. They immediately freeze. Lee slowly rotates with all the expressions of horror in his face and runs towards little Beau as fast as he can. Like he has to race to him before something, a monster maybe. At the same time, something in the woods starts moving. Just before Lee could grab Beau, it takes the kid away. And we get to see the thing that's wrong with this world. A monster that's drawn to sound.
And that's how A Quiet Place opens. A horror film yet devoid of almost any forced jumpscares.
A Quiet Place is a post-apocalyptic horror sci-fi directed by John Krasinski, yeah, that funny guy from The Office.
John Krasinski as a director, I didn't know what to expect from him. Like with a budget of around 20 million dollars, what could a guy make? But holy shit was I blown away. He is a brilliant director, and while making this film, he followed methodology from other successful horror sci-fi. An absolute monster which is after the whole of humanity and humans being very puny in front of such creatures is not a new concept. The world setting changes film to film, but the central theme always remains similar. And If you carefully follow the pattern, successful movies from any of the same genres tend to follow a similar set of methods. It doesn't matter whether its Nolan, Tarantino or Scorsese.
And Krasinski knew and used it a little too well.
Despite being Named A Quiet Place, the movie is not entirely soundless. In horrors sound and BGM is one of the most important aspects used to create ambiance and depth of a sequence. This film is very creatively explored this too. For example, sound in cheap horror film means scary monstrous scream, the sound of meat and bone thrashing around, and so on. But when you try to literally reinvent the use of sound, you'll be at least left with unique ideas. Like in a world devoid of sound, where monsters hunt sources of noise, you can commit suicide in a sense by making it. Whether the motivation is the death of a loved one or to save a family member. Krasinski explored this too. In such retrospect, it's not the visuals that are horrifying, it's the concept.
With only 5 or 6 characters in the entire movie and almost nonexistent dialogues, this movie depends on the events on screen to tell the story. Its kind of immersive and the story is left open to interpretations. There is some plot armor that I couldn't wrap my head around like why did the hearing aid malfunction repeatedly around the monsters, I do not know. Hopefully, we'll find the answer in the sequel.
It's not the best horror film that ever existed, and I watched only a handful of movies from this genre so I couldn't say, but if you judge it just as a film its a pretty great film. I Always hated horror, because of the cheesy elements in them and none will be in my top ten unless I find a worthy one. This too is not among my most favorites. But hands down its something worthy of watching and spending time on its lore's. At least I had a great time watching it.
TBH, I didn’t know there was such a cool ongoing contest by @wiseagent before yesterday when @serialfiller nominated me. This week's theme is “Unleash the monster.”
Some of the other films I wanted to write a review on were already “hijacked” by some of the other fellow participants. So here’s my review on A Quiet Place. Most probably The best horror film of 2018.
Link to the actual contest post
Another rule of the contest is to tag two others to participate. I don’t know many others who write reviews but I know some who might like to try. So I tag @linco @simplifylife. Make me proud boys. Write something hard to beat.
