A Quiet Place

Another more experimental horror film today, the almost dialogue-free A Quiet Place, which was quite the hit a few months ago. I have to say, my initial stance was a little disapproving – this film is seven parts The Last of Us, three parts The Village, with just a dash of Cloverfield for monster design. A bearded but grizzled father whose name I can’t remember but I always thought of as Joel, has a first-act tragedy to get us invested and introduce the dangers of this world, then has to survive attacks from clicking, sound-sensitive monsters in a post-apocalyptic United States. It’s not unfamiliar territory.

This shows how the long-delayed The Last of Us movie could actually work extremely well and find a very receptive audience. It makes me a little sad that people who watch it when it eventually comes out might be pulled from their immersion by remembering how they’ve seen the Clickers somewhere before.

Beyond that similarity, this is a good chance for strong performances. The kids act well but the adults – the director John Krasinski, and his real-life wife Emily Blunt – get a real chance to shine. They can portray fear, pain, terror, resolve, bravery and even despairing resignation so well without words. For a short movie with a tiny cast, it does everything it needs to with brevity and grace.

Maybe the scares could have been better, and maybe seeing less of the monsters would have helped. The way they find to combat the creatures and the idea that nobody ever tried something like that before seems very far-fetched, but it worked in the little microcosm of the film.

Not bad, but not fantastic either, it at least tried something different. At least, different from other films. Not very different from video games.