movie review: A Quiet Place

When it comes to horror films, I admit that I love me a good, mindless slasher flick, where (often undead) serial killers chase shallow characters of dubious intelligence until all but one have fallen prey to the villain. But sometimes, I'm in the mood for something a little more artful, a little smarter, and A Quiet Place is one of the best, smartest movies in years. Not just one of the best and smartest horror movies, one of the best movies period.

The premise: In the near future, creatures of unknown origin* stalk and kill anyone who makes a sound. The creatures are too fast to flee, and too well-armored to fight. The only defense is to remain really, really quiet. Forever. Make a noise, and you're dead.

Naturally, such a lifestyle comes with its share of challenges, to say the least, and the movie is the story of one particular family trying to survive in a world where silence is a constant necessity for survival. The premise is intriguingly unique on a story level, but on a presentation level, it's ingenious, and co-writer/ director John Krasinski surpasses the challenges, to make a true piece of art that should be studied for generations to come. Krasinski uses the premise to play with silence and sound in a manner of such inventiveness not seen since the days when cinema was first starting to experiment with replacing silent films with sound films for the first time. This involves not just what you hear, but what you see, and as a director, Krasinski knows that the premise lends the sight of normally innocent, everyday objects -- a child's toy, a nail sticking out of the floor, a precariously placed glass jar -- a dread unparalleled in most of even the best horror films. Krasinski's having fun with his audience, and we're having fun back with him, but don't mistake my meaning as some kind of declaration of "hey, it's a fun, wacky comedy!" because oh no it isn't. The suspense is intense enough to be almost unbearable, and I mean that in the best way possible.

There's a far-too-often-ignored rule of narrative that states that the best stories play to the top of the audience's intelligence. Krasinski and his co-writers repeatedly prove that they've taken this rule to heart. This is a movie that requires attention to both foreground and background (headlines on newspapers flapping in the breeze in the background, for example, provide some of the back-story) and I like how the writers know when we'll be able to figure important details out without everything being explained to us like we're inattentive children. Example: When we see that the wife in the family is very pregnant, her every appearance on screen is a constant, nerve-wracking reminder that her very condition risks the lives of everyone in the family. The fact that this monumental danger is unspoken only increases the spell of suspese and terror generated by the situation; Krasinski and his co-writers know that the spell would be partially broken if one of the characters had observed in dialogue, "but hey, what do we do when the baby's born, babies cry, and they cry loudly, we're all gonna die from the monsters hearing it!"

It's unnecessary. The characters know that their life is in constant danger, and so do we. This is a very scary movie. But more to the point, it's a very creative, very intelligent, and over-all, very good movie. I highly recommend it.

*In interviews, John Krasinski has stated that the creatures are extraterrestrial, but there is absolutely nothing in the actual film that establishes this.