Krishna
I will try to avoid giving away much but it is so difficult in this type of movie. Perhaps I can preserve how it all ends, so that, if you have not already seen the movie, you still have something to look forward to.
First of all, hats off to John Krasinski. I did not know he had it in him to direct and act in something like this. If you watched his performance in The Office, he managed to underwhelm. His trademark was to look into the camera with a puzzled expression (He was Jim, dating Pam forever and married to her later in the series. He managed to be outshone by both Steve Carrell and Rann Wilson, who played Dwight) and I thought he did not have it in him to make a mark in acting in movies, let alone direct one. He proved me wrong. (I am reminded of Bryan Cranston, who was similarly underwhelming in Malcolm in the Middle, before spectacularly breaking out of the mold in Breaking Bad).
It is kind of a family project because two of the main characters is him and his wife Emily Blunt.
There are many things to love in this movie. One is that it does not patronize you and just gets on with the story. The story starts simply at Day 89. Day 89 of what? They don’t bother to explain but make you understand with things in the story. (Paper cuttings, white board notes and simply as things happen). The effect is spectacular. You piece them together bit by bit, and it is as if they had told you everything in order starting from ‘One day, a terrible thing happened’.
The second nice thing about this movie is that there are not many people in the movie. It is all about the Abbots – husband Lee (John Krasinski with a beard and he manages to shake off his association with The Office character Jim as the movie goes on), wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt, giving adequate support) and the central character who steals the show, Regan, who is a hearing impaired daughter. Apart from them is the son Marcus, who needs medication due to his asthma. There is another daughter Beau but she is “taken” right in almost the first five minutes and so the whole movie revolves around these four.
And there are hardly any dialogs. They talk in sign language (and neatly explained and credible because of Regan, they had to learn all this).
The story starts brilliantly. You realize that they had to go only in the daytime and quietly at that. Sound is lethal, as demonstrated when Beau sneaks a rocket (he is a great rocket enthusiast) and, falling behind when they go back home, switches it on. In seconds, he is snatched by something that you hardly see (it is a blur) and is gone.
You slowly learn the background. The earth (or at least the US) is taken over by an alien race, which eats anything alive, including humans. From Lee’s meticulous notes, you find that civilization is broken down and there are hardly any survivors in the area he lives in. These aliens are blind, and hunt by sound alone – which is why US is now “A Quiet Place”. They also have a body armour so it is hard to kill them even with guns. There is a note that “two were spotted in that area” so to survive they stay indoors, with trip wires (they light up when tripped and do not sound alarms) and silent navigation. Lee keeps trying to make hearing aids (no shops or malls are populated anymore) and like in The Walking Dead, they have to scavenge stores for medicine and other supplies.
Even supporting actors are only three (if you count one that is already dead as an ‘actor’).
The tension ratchets up when they accidentally make noise breaking a lantern and setting a rug on fire and then hear sounds on the tin roof. In typical horror movie fashion, it turns out to be a raccoon. Finally they (and we) do come face to face with the horror of the monsters, and they are also hiding when these go around their own house looking for them and they try to stay still with no noise in order to thwart them.
Great scenes where Emily discovers that she is pregnant and you are as anxious as them to see how the new child will survive. In order to ratchet up the suspense, the kids get trapped in a grain silo with the monster(s?) outside and Lee goes to get them back and Evelyn steps on an open nail with another one of them right nearby and cannot even scream. Well planned story, huge tension with no sound at all (except for the background score of course).
I will not tell you how it ends, as promised, but the end suits the whole theme of the movie. Nice work. Definitely worth watching. I am sure Jim is as surprised as everyone else how much of a hit this turned out to be, but it is really a well made, well crafted movie. Every one has done their part and Millicent Simmonds, who plays Regan, has done a spectacular job and nearly steals the show from everyone else.
Good movie, nice to watch. I enjoyed it.
8/10
– – Krishna (May 2018)