MAKE SOME NOISE FOR JOHN KRASINSKI
Movie Review – A Quiet Place
Review by Paul Preston
John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place is an impressive directorial debut. It looks to have taken a page out of the Blumhouse playbook – high concept, low budget, one location – but closer inspection reveals the producing team to be Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes company. Michael Bay’s not known for a quiet anything, so it’s a welcome surprise to see good acting and meticulous filmmaking win out over big budget thrills.
The story involves a not-too-distant future where an alien race is on Earth and humans are threatened on a daily basis because if the creatures hear the slightest noise or rustling, they’ll seek out and eliminate the source. Managing to survive for months in this landscape is the Abbott family, versed in sign language and trained to keep quiet as they try and thrive in the new world. An early catastrophe sets up the family dynamic and then the film jumps a year to put the viewer into the routine The Abbotts have set up as their new life on Earth.
Krasinski has previously directed a couple of low-profile films and a few episodes of The Office (where he made a name for himself as an actor), but this leap into a mainstream, wide release hit is a bold one, as Krasinski also co-writes, executive produces and stars in the film. The film’s pacing is excellent, setting up scenes effectively and delivering real suspense from the point of view of the Abbotts, which is to say we’re often put in their perspective, not the monsters’ POV. This involves a lot of close-ups of a very game cast.
Noah Jupe and Millicent Simmonds play the Abbott kids, with Simmonds shining as the deaf child harboring guilt and a desire to be an important catalyst in the family thriving. Wanting no part of any of it is Jupe’s Marcus, who’s as scared as you’d expect a young boy to be, living in constant fear of being hunted by giant, spider-like aliens. Juggling these personalities is Krasinski and Emily Blunt’s Lee and Evelyn, as A Quiet Place has as much to say about parenting as it does about aliens conquering Earth. You’re never in bad shape when you have Emily Blunt topping your cast list. She’s a striking and skillfully emotional actress whose Evelyn Abbott is pregnant much of the film, upping the stakes in some of the more tense scenes. Why Lee and Evelyn would bring a child into a horrifying world such as this is a challenging question (and one I ask myself all the time during The Walking Dead). It’s certainly a choice that makes things more difficult for them, but it’s also one that carries its own act of defiance. Krasinski had a knack for throwing a snarky look at the camera in The Office and has now developed into a multi-faceted leading man. He bulked up his body in films like Aloha and 13 Hours (where he no-doubt struck up his relationship with Michael Bay) and now has matched that look with hero appeal. And in co-writing A Quiet Place with the book’s authors, Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, he’s successfully triple-threated himself.
You’ll probably hear much about the film’s sound design and it deserves recognition. The Marco Beltrami score chimes in occasionally to remind you this is a movie, or there might be too much verisimilitude. We want to fear for and root for The Abbotts, not be them! But when the score is absent, the slightest sound can be jarring, or downright menacing. Krasinski and DP Charlotte Bruus Christensen have whipped up a couple of unique suspense scenes that will no doubt go down as some of the year’s best involving a bathtub and a grain silo.
A Quiet Place deserves all the still-relevant-in-a-year praise that Get Out received as it lands squarely in the genre while offering up something new at the same time.
Directed by: John Krasinski
Release Date: April 6, 2018
Run Time: 90 Minutes
Rated: PG-13
Country: USA
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
