Movie Review: A Quiet Place

The first trailer that I saw for John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place did what all good movie trailers are supposed to do, put the movie on the list of films I wanted to see. The concept presented, one of people being hunted by an unknown predator who tracks its prey through sound, thereby requiring the characters to avoid speaking or making any noise, seemed to offer something more interesting and complex than the average horror thriller. But the finished product, while certainly competent and entertaining, tilts more toward the average than the interesting and complex.

A Quiet Place opens post-apocalypse, with a family of five rummaging quietly through a wrecked and abandoned store for medicines and supplies. On the way back to the farm the youngest child activates the world’s noisiest space shuttle toy and is quickly devoured by a creature. From there the film advances over a year, and finds the family living the peaceful life (literally) on their farm. The father, Lee Abbot (played by director Krasinski) works to maintain the farm and its defenses. In his spare time, he sends Morse code signals on various radio frequencies and works on fixing a hearing aid for his daughter. The mom, Evelyn (Emily Blunt) focuses on standard gender roles involving laundry, food and being pregnant, but she’s such a badass later in the film that it doesn’t matter. Daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) is deaf (as is the actress) and feeling guilty about letting her brother keep a noisy toy without making sure he didn’t take the batteries. Son Marcus (Noah Jupe) does math and reluctantly learns survival skills. An array of video screens and whiteboards in the basement tell us little about the predatory creatures other than that they are blind, hunt through sound and are armored. When things get noisy, mayhem ensues.

As horror thrillers go, A Quiet Place is certainly above average. The characters don’t break any new ground, but are well-written, and within the confines of the script (it’s practically a silent movie) the acting is excellent. Emily Blunt may be out of John Krasinski’s league in a number of ways, but he manages to keep up. The characters make mistakes that put them in jeopardy but are not particularly stupid in the standard horror movie way. While you get the impression that the film might explore topics related to guilt, loss and the pressures related to being forced to live in silence, it spends the majority of its time being a creature feature. Although their origins are unexplained, once we get a good look at these things, they are not camera shy, and the design is effective. Tension is well-developed throughout, and some of the individual scenes evoke genuine dread and terror. While all stories tend to be composed of coincidences, there are more ‘what are the odds’ moments in this film than were likely necessary. But that may only be a problem if you think too much. Otherwise, even though it doesn’t deeply explore the psychological depths that the story offered, A Quiet Place is still a good movie and a great scare. B+

Book Report 4/14/14

Currently Reading (nonfiction): The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond

What can we learn from traditional societies? That is the subtitle and question at the heart of Jared Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday. Diamond, who has given us plenty to think about in previous books (Guns, Germs and Steel, Collapse, The Third Chimpanzee), explores some of the different ways that traditional societies approach issues such as justice, child rearing and language, contrasting them with the general approach of the complex state societies most of the rest of us live in. The book promises a look at the diversity of human responses to typical situations by societies (bands, tribes and chiefdoms) that have a longer historical foundation than those state societies. Diamond seems intent on avoiding romanticizing these societies, warning that they will offer as many bad lessons as good. The first chapter offers a look at land use (and the level of exclusive use by several cultures); the definitions of friends, enemies and strangers; and the how trade is transacted between different tribes.

Currently Reading (fiction): Southern Haunts Part 2: Devils in the Darkness edited by Alexander S. Brown & Louise Myers

Although I am only three stories and a poem into this anthology of demon themed short stories, if the quality of the writing fails to improve I may regret the purchase. I get the idea that most of these writers understand the subject that they wish to write about, but that few of them have heard that most basic of writing advice “show, don’t tell.” Sure, I’m willing to accept a certain level of exposition in order to set the stage for a story, but these stories seem to be composed almost entirely of exposition, explaining things about the character’s past or the devils and demons plaguing them rather than constructing scenes where the characters act and interact with other elements of the story. A story titled The Battle of Vicksburg doesn’t even have any characters, but sets the stage for some kind of supernatural conflict between a demon and former Civil War Generals Lee and Grant. The narrative is told in the second person, not a particular problem except that there is no character attached to that perspective, so I’m not sure that it technically is a short story. But I’m still reading, with the hope that there are better stories in the remaining pages.

Book Report 4/7/14

Book Report 3/20/14
Book Report 2/27/14

Frankenstein Part II: Crash Course Literature 206

The Zombie Notpocalypse

Much like the ubiquitous vampires of the recent Twilight era, zombies are a hot commodity, as evidenced by the popularity of The Walking Dead and World War Z. Sure, zombies have probably passed the peak of their popularity, but they may have a couple of years before they become as overexposed and tedious as the vampires.

One unexpected consequence of all this zombie popularity is that it has pretty much eliminated the possibility that the zombie apocalypse will ever occur. I know, you’d have thought that the major problem with that would be biological, that dead organisms can’t really get up and walk around after they are, well, dead. But the presence of zombies within pop culture poses another difficulty to the zombies, should the problem of animating necrotic tissue ever be solved, and that is, we all now know how to deal with them.

Let’s face it, the only thing that zombies really have going for them is surprise, no one expects the dead to get up and start biting people. In a world without a pop culture reference to zombies, people would probably be confused and uncertain how to deal with the newly resurrected corpses. But us, we’ve got this covered. After the initial shock wore off, we’d get down to business pretty quickly, shooting walking corpses in the head and making sure that the dead were properly disposed of.  Even if the generals and admirals were uncertain of how to respond to an outbreak, soldiers and sailors raised on Resident Evil and other video games would step up and squash the threat fairly quickly. Sure there might be some initial panic and maybe even quite a few causalities, but ultimately the zombie apocalypse will never have a chance.