Starring: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, and Noah Jupe
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Runtime: 90 mins. Reviewed in Apr 2018
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This American horror film tells the story of four members of a family, who live in fear of being attacked by alien animal creatures that attack immediately on hearing sound. Emily Blunt, who takes the lead role in the film, is married to the movie’s director, John Krasinski, who takes the role of her husband in the movie.
The film starts on Day 89 on a ravaged earth. The family live an isolated existence on a farm in the woods, and they struggle to survive against the aliens who live in the forest around them. The creatures who live there have laid waste to human civilisation, and they locate their victims by sound, not sight. To escape attack, the family is forced to live in complete silence.
The parents communicate in sign language with themselves and their children. They do their best to give their children a normal life, but they know that is unlikely to happen without sound. All the members of the family are plagued by the terror that the alien creatures bring. Viewers are introduced to the horror by seeing huge claw marks scratched into the wood panels inside the family house. Then we see more of the creatures, or at least the signs of their presence, and as the tension escalates members of the family have to spend every minute of their lives keeping the creatures at bay.
This is not a movie that aims to capture viewers’ attention by scenes of menacing ghosts or apparitions jumping out of the background to repeatedly reveal themselves in startling fashion, or furniture being mysteriously moved by strange forces to the accompaniment of creepy music. It is not that kind of film. The context of dread is revealed “quietly”, almost stealthily, in complete harmony with the plot-line. Dread escalates through the actions of the family, almost as much as through the behaviour of the creatures themselves. Everything that seems normal for a family takes on potential threat, because it could cause sound. The family members are even forced to mark the boards in their house that creak, or make unexpected noises, so that they can step over them, in case the worst happens.
Character development in this film is one of its strengths, which is not usual for a lot of movies in the horror genre (“Winchester”, 2018, for example). We see the effects of terror on everyday lives, and both parents and children cooperatively learn strategies over time on how best to survive, and grow to understand each other better.
Emily Blunt wants to ensure that her children grow up “fully thinking” and she fights against the forces trying to ensure they don’t. John Krasinski, the father of the family, just wants to get his wife and children (and himself) through unscathed each day. Millicent Simmonds plays the family’s deaf daughter. Her role gives the plot-line a nice twist by presenting us with a character who is unable to hear the sounds that the creatures can’t bear to hear. Noah Jupe plays her brother in the film, who, in contrast to his sister, hears perfectly well.
Within the horror genre, the movie makes a compelling case for loving parenthood. These parents go to extraordinary lengths to protect their children, and one dies in the attempt. Further, the film tells us that parents should participate completely in what their children are doing and thinking, not just close their ears (and eyes) to what could be happening.
This is a very clever horror movie with a plot line that works remarkably well. It is impressively directed and acted, and it develops its tension well. It takes an ingenious idea, expands it by integrating it coherently into the plot-line, and builds character development scarily around it. It is unquestionably a film in the horror genre, with violence and horror predictably on show (should sounds occur), but it is tolerably M, which means the violence is mostly indirect. Essentially, this is a classy horror movie that demonstrates the potential for terror that lies lurking in ordinary events.
Peter W. Sheehan is Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
Review by Bishop Robert Barron
**SPOILER ALERT! Article contains many spoilers about the film**
I went to see A Quiet Place, John Krasinski’s new thriller, with absolutely no anticipation of finding theological or spiritual themes. I just wanted a fun evening at the movies. How wonderful when a film surprises you! I don’t know if I can find the golden thread that draws all of these themes together into a coherent message, but I think one would have to be blind not to see a number of religious motifs in this absorbing film.
The basic structure of the narrative is laid out in simple, deft strokes. We learn that a terrible plague of fierce, devouring creatures has descended on the earth. Where are the monsters from? Outer space, maybe? We’re never told—which makes the story more compelling. The few people who have survived the holocaust have learned that the creatures, though blind, are extraordinarily acute of hearing. Therefore, the key to survival is silence. Our attention becomes focused on the Abbot family, two youthful parents and three small children, making their quiet way through a beautiful but dangerous open country. When the youngest of the kids flips a switch on his toy rocket, causing buzzing sound to pierce the silence, one of the beasts devours him just before his terrified father can save him.
We flash-forward several months later, and we watch the Abbots (can the name have possibly been accidental?) going about their lives in what could only be characterized as a monastic manner: no conversations above a whisper, elaborate sign language, quiet work at books and in the fields, silent but obviously fervent prayer before the evening meal, etc. (I will confess that this last gesture, so thoroughly absent from movies and television today, startled me.) Given the awful demands of the moment, any gadgets, machines, electronic entertainment, or noisy implements are out of the question. Their farming is by hand; their fishing is done with pre-modern equipment; even their walking about is done barefoot. And what is most marvelous to behold is that, in this prayerful, quiet, pre-modern atmosphere, even with the threat of imminent death constantly looming, a generous and mutually self-sacrificing family flourishes. The parents care for and protect their children, and the remaining brother and sister are solicitous toward one another and toward their parents. The young girl even regularly risks her life to pay silent tribute to her fallen brother at the spot where he was killed.
Monsters and beasts in the more reflective horror movies are evocative of those things that frighten us the most: illness, failure, our own wickedness, death itself. How wonderful that a Hollywood movie would suggest that what is needed to keep the darkness at bay in our time is silence, simplicity, a return to the earth, prayer, and care for one another.
The central drama of A Quiet Place is that Mrs Abbott is expecting a child. The entire family realises, of course, that a wailing infant would, given the circumstances, mean almost certain death for all of them. And yet, they decide not to kill the child at his birth but to hide him and mute his cries in various ways. When so many in our culture are willing to murder their children for the flimsiest of reasons, when the law gives full protection even to partial-birth abortion, when people blithely say that they would never bring a baby into such a terrible world, the monastic family in this film welcomes life, even into the worst of worlds, and even when such an act is of supreme danger to them. As the baby is coming into the light, the mother finds herself alone (watch the film for the details) and in the most vulnerable situation, for one of the beasts has made its way into their house. As she labours to give birth, the devouring animal lurks. I was put immediately in mind of the scene in the book of Revelation, where Mary is in the throes of child birth as the dragon patiently waits to consume the child.
As ‘the abbess’ is struggling to give birth, ‘the abbot’ has gone in search of his endangered children. He finds them, to his horror, trapped in an abandoned car, one of the beasts clawing at them through the roof, like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. After mouthing the words, “I love you; I have always loved you” to his daughter, who gapes at him through the car window, the father screams, drawing the monster to himself. This act of self-emptying love, which serves to liberate his children from danger, is beautifully evocative of the speculations of the Church Fathers regarding the death of Jesus. In his act of self-sacrifice on the cross, the fathers argued, Jesus lured the dark powers into the open and away from the human beings who had been in their thrall. Along similar lines, in an odd working of plot or Providence that can be likened to the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice, it becomes clear in the wake of the father’s death that he has left behind for his family the means by which the monsters can be defeated.
I have no real idea whether any or all of this was in the mind of the filmmaker, but I do know from John Krasinski’s Wikipedia page that he is the son of a Polish-Catholic father and an Irish-Catholic mother and that he was raised a devout practicer of his faith. So until definitively shown otherwise, I am going to maintain that A Quiet Place is the most unexpectedly religious film of 2018.
Source: https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/article/the-most-unexpectedly-religious-film-of-the-year/5750/
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