‘A Quiet Place’ is silent classic
Marcus Campbell
Mesa Legend
“A Quiet Place” premiered theatrically on April 6 to rave reviews and audience acclaim across the board. Metacritic currently has the movie sitting at a healthy 82 percent critic score and a 7.9 audience score. That makes the film the 12th highest score on Metacritic so far this year and the fifth most discussed movie of the year. The film marks a major motion picture directorial debut for John Krasinski although he has directed smaller films in the past. “A Quiet Place” is a tight, gripping thriller that dials up the tension as it dials down the sound while focusing on a family of well-built characters.
The film opens with a surprising and tense display of the realities of the world the characters inhabit. Their world is centered around sound and their ability to cover it up. The creatures of this world hunt through sound and force the characters to live an entirely silent existence. The film cashes in on its central premise and delivers to the highest degree. What the film lacks in surprises it makes up for with its consistent thrills. John Krasinski stars as the patriarch of the Abbott family alongside Emily Blunt as the matriarch of the Abbott’s. Their children are played wonderfully by Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, and Cade Woodward. Millicent Simmonds is a standout as the families’ deaf daughter.
Simmonds provides added dimensions and threats to a world teeming with peril and danger. Simmonds adds layers of suspense to an already tense storyline by providing interesting obstacles for the characters to overcome. John Krasinski is incredible in the motion picture and provides one of his best performances. Krasinski turns in his strongest performance since 13 Hours. Emily Blunt is fantastic in her usual way. Her empathy for her kids is excellently portrayed across the length of the film. Blunts performance also shines in moments where she shows the struggles of her situation in her demeanor.
The children don’t provide much for the story aside from a consequence for the parents’ actions and a source of tension. The film is not without its flaws, the story is incredibly short and the ending happened all too abruptly. The tone of the final scene also feels like it comes from a different and more action-packed film. The film also suffers from a predictable premise and storyline. Despite how well-crafted the story is; the film falls into easy to guess trends. From the fifteen-minute mark of the film forward, almost every moment of the film was predictable by most casual movie audiences.
“A Quiet Place” also suffers from redundant storytelling and a derivative setting. The sets of “A Quiet Place” feel a bit too much like a spin-off of “Signs” with slightly more nefarious aliens.
The cornfields, small town, and family dynamic are all eerily reminiscent of the M. Night Shyamalan horror film. The storytelling aspect of “The Quiet Place” is all to familiar to several recent releases the first, and most notable of these films is “Don’t Breathe”. Both of these films share a very similar central premise and aesthetic the only difference is the cause of the silence; with one being aliens and the other being an astute human being.
