Film Review: A Quiet Place (with some classic preamble)

A few years ago I did a course, as part of my Masters, called Freelance Writing, which actually turned out to be Critical Reviewing, but true to form, administration and politics got in the way of logic, common sense and academia, and though the entire content of the course had been changed and they’d told the lecturer ‘yeah whatever that’s fine it seems semi-related’, they hadn’t really thought it was important to update the name of the course or tell the enrolling students until we were all sitting there in the class.

I’m sure you can sense my thinly veiled resentment, which festered due to the not entirely unrelated shitshow that was this class. To be clear, the teacher was dedicated, intelligent, passionate, and did everything in their power to try and hold it all together. But, without saying too much (was there an overtly racist individual in my class who believed a foreign government had implanted them with a microchip? Almost definitely.), at the end of the day I could pretty confidently and passionately argue that consecutive government funding cuts to universities result in poorer course quality and absolute freaking absurdity.

On the plus side, I was taught to make neat little 300-word reviews. So if I can find someone who will publish all my reviews, and pay me at least 71 cents per word, which the Australian Society of Authors loosely believes to be the mean rate, then I’ll only need to write 15 and a half reviews to break even, hooray!

In the meantime, I’m going to pop my old ones here in this blog, starting with those that might actually be useful to you, because ain’t no one seeing a circus cabaret act in Sydney right now. If, like me, you feel like you’ve reached the end of Netflix, and you aren’t averse to watching other apocalyptic worlds during lockdown, then try A Quiet Place. I haven’t seen the second film (they’re never quite as good, are they?) but maybe I’ll give it a shot sometime soon and get back to you.

A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place uses a simple horror film premise to explore things unsaid, and how to maintain life in a world muted by tense silence and deafening terror. Nerves fray as blind monsters aurally stalk their human prey; even toys become fatal for a family of five turned four in a tragic accident. On Day 89 of the invasion of these seemingly indestructible creatures, no one wears shoes, or shuts doors, and paths are strewn with sand to silence footsteps. Krasinski encourages appreciation of sombre scenic beauty, as visuals take on new meaning in a film largely devoid of dialogue. Music sparingly heightens tension. Light becomes a motif for hope and togetherness, then true to genre, flickering torches and glowing red bulbs signal danger. Save for a poignant shot where fires alight over hills to represent distantly connected others, there are no community encounters, except a haunting scene with a grieving old man who has violently lost his wife.

Emily Blunt stars alongside her husband, Krasinski. Their effortless, quiet connection translates to the on-screen marriage, through expression, body and sign language. The children teach their parents difficult lessons, particularly as we’re offered a heart-wrenching look into the loneliness and anger of the daughter (Millicent Simmonds), who even in a world where silence is survival, is isolated by what at first appears to be a stringent set of gender norms, but comes down to her inability to hear. Ultimately, deafness and womanhood triumph, and though gutted by the father’s sacrifices, it’s the mothers attempt to give birth alone, in hunted silence, that hits hardest. There’s an ethical dilemma to consider: why risk bringing a child into this world? But Blunt’s character, after listening to the heartbeat of her unborn baby with resilient acceptance, says to her husband, “Who are we if we can’t protect them?” 

A Quiet Place

Released 6 April 2018

Starring and directed by John Krasinski

Run time 95 mins

Find out where to watch it here

p.s. as I was posting this I remembered that my housemates and I were running late to the cinema (yeah, remember when you could see movies at the cinema? Wild!) and when we arrived, there were kids in our seats. One of them was a boy from my Year 10 English class. I can’t remember if he noticed me before or after we sat in different seats instead, but I do remember a chagrined ‘Aw, sorry, Miss’ at some stage. As the movie started, everyone had a moment of panic as they realised that it was going to be entirely silent, the whole way through, and they had yet to open their rustling packets of chips/lollies/whatever else. Instead, my main concern was that this kid would hear and see me furiously scribbling notes in a notebook, and forever think that English teachers were lifelong nerds physically incapable of not writing notes while watching a movie. I swear I usually just watch TV for fun, please like me!