This review is delayed and the reasons for the delay pretty much encapsulate my feelings for this film. I saw this over a week ago and left the theater without much to say. With a really bad or good movie, I leave the theater with jokes or comments already in mind, but it’s the middle-of-the-road movies that are the toughest. That was exactly the case here. The movie was okay, but I just didn’t have much to say. So I went a couple of days without reviewing it, hoping that something interesting would come to mind. Nothing did, but I finally sat down to write a mundane review. At the moment that I finished that review, my computer froze and I lost it before I could save it. I had given up on the notion of reviewing it at that point, but the Yankees are having yet another rain delay on an uneventful Sunday, so fuck it. Here are my quickly-fading thoughts on A Quiet Place.
A Quiet Place is the latest example of what some pretentious asshats call “elevated horror” or “sophisticated horror” or some similar variation, all of which terms are used by critics when they like a horror movie but don’t want to admit that they like a horror movie because the genre is beneath them. Usually such films are presented as examinations of some significant theme or issue and the horror elements are critically treated as incidental content. Also, such films tend to be boring as fuck and include such recent coma-inducers as The Witch and The Bobadook. A Quiet Place is the latest such film, and I’m happy to report that it isn’t nearly as boring as the aforementioned films. I don’t understand the nearly universal praise being heaped upon this thing, but its okay.
John Krasinski directs and stars alongside his real-life wife Emily Blunt as parents that are trying to survive with their kids in a post-apocalyptic world that has been ravaged by blind monsters that hunt by sound. As an extra wrinkle, Blunt’s character is pregnant because that’s a great idea in a world where noise=death. That’s about it for the broad strokes of the plot, as the film is about this family’s efforts to survive in this world.
First, the positives. Krasinski is a very talented director and dramatic actor and I’m happy to see him have success outside of comedy. Like many people, I immediately think of Jim Halpert when I see him, but there isn’t a trace of that here. His performance is excellent and the film is well-shot, particularly in its use of color and ability to relay visual information with minimal dialogue. Emily Blunt is Emily Blunt, by which I mean that she’s awesome. Several segments of the film are effective and suspenseful, particularly the labor and silo scenes. Possibly the most interesting bits are simply about how the family has survived in these circumstances, from little touches (like lining walking paths with sand) to the elaborate plan that the family has to cover-up the inevitable noise from labor and the baby. It’s a well thought-out and intelligently made film. It just isn’t a great horror film.
Much like the movies that I mentioned earlier, the horror here almost feels like incidental content to support a thematic element. The movie never embraces its genre. Like The Witch is about religious paranoia and The Bobadook is about the struggles of being a single parent, A Quiet Place is really a study of family dynamics with disabilities. That could be fine. Certainly many great horror films have dealt with larger issues. But the best such films treat the thematic content as a secondary product of the horror, not the other way around. Here, the horror is pretty half-assed. The use of bullshit jump-scares (oh, its just a bunny!) becomes pretty grating after a half hour and the monsters feel like an afterthought. I know that I bitch a lot about computer effects, but these things just look like rejects from a Resident Evil game. Even the set pieces that work well enough (like the labor scene) come up short because the film never goes for the jugular. The circumstances are scary enough, but the film never embraces horror enough to show us anything that’s actually, well, horrifying.
This is really a family drama that uses the horror genre as a backdrop. It’s fine. It’s well-directed with excellent performances, but I left disappointed due to the half-assed horror elements. You won’t be terribly disappointed if you see it in a theater, but I would recommend it more in a year when its available to watch at home. Or maybe you will love it. I seem to be the only person that didn’t.
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