Channeling elements of It Comes At Night, Signs, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Last Of Us and elements of Invaders From Mars to name but a few others, A Quiet Place‘s sensibilities lie within their intimacies.
Real life husband and wife John Krasinski and Emily Blunt play a married couple, living in a world blighted by an invasion, the details of which are scattered like narrative breadcrumbs.
Joining the film at Day 89 of this invasion, we’re thrust into their world – a father and mother trying to protect their children from creatures which pick off their victims when they make sound.
Opening in a deserted supermarket, with visual elements of The Last Of Us, this is a world where insularity helps ensure safety.
However, after a shocking incident, the family finds it has to pull together in the wake of devastation and no end in sight to what has been unleashed.
It’s unfair to review A Quiet Place by spoiling it for others, ruining the shocks and spills so rarely experienced at the movies these days.
Loosely speaking, the film works best in its own bubble of innocence; it’s a story about the sacrifices and lengths family have to go to protect each other. In a wider, some could see it as an allegory of the world today, and politics in general.
A Quiet Place rallies a cry for intimate originality in film which has long been muted by bloated blockbusters and tiresome, unfulfilling sequels.
But what’s orchestrated by Krasinski throughout is, largely, terrifically taut, true to the genre yet willing to shape it as its own.
A few quibbles of logic hit parts of the set pieces, yet above all, A Quiet Place manages to grip and terrify in the right measure.
It helps that a good portion of the film is silent, using sign language and subtitles – something Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver managed to mainstream to great narrative effect.
However, what the subtitles do here convey an atmosphere of rebellion, of frustration and of familial love among the terror that any second something could strike.
Wisely, and rather than play coy, Krasinski and his writers decide early on to reveal the creatures terrorising the world.
The result is that it’s actually engaging.
More compellingly, it feels fresh throughout – even though some of the logical lapses stand out a little more because of this.
Certainly, a sequence involving a bathtub, Blunt, a creature and an impending baby leads to some real edge of the seat stuff that is amongst some of the best orchestrated of the year so far.
Terrifically entertaining, suspenseful, and above all fresh, A Quiet Place rallies a cry for intimate originality in film which has long been muted by bloated blockbusters and tiresome, unfulfilling sequels.
A Quiet Place
Cast: John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Noah Jupe, Millicent Simmonds, Cade Woodward
Director: John Krasinski
