Review by Connor Moriarty
Nailing the Suspenseful Set-Piece
Two men
sit down at a fairly upscale restaurant and begin to discuss baseball. After
about two minutes of conversation (Kaboom!) a bomb under the table explodes.
The audience is left completely surprised, but the surprise is quick and their
exhilaration fades after only a few minutes.
In telling
this anecdote, Alfred Hitchcock subsequently suggests, that the filmmaker show
the bomb under the table before the scene even begins. Taking this approach,
fills every word of every sentence with dread and anxiety. Every second that
the two men spend ignorant of the explosive beneath them, feels like hours of
torture to the audience.
John
Krasinski’s A Quiet Place, blazes
through its 90 minute run time, utilizing at every possible moment, the
patented and proven Hitchcockian brand of suspense.
Krasinski’s
first foray into horror doesn’t contain much of a plot or concern itself with
fleshing out its lead characters. Instead, every scene carries with it, a
sustained, palpable tension. Just as Hitchcock suggests showing the audience
the bomb prior to the scene’s
opening, Krasinski shows it to us, before the titles appear. Except in the place of a bomb, we have seemingly
invincible monsters, with hypersensitive hearing.
This is where
the film truly shines as every scene, every cut, and every step a character
takes is nearly drowned in the expectation that everything can and will go
wrong. The final thirty or so minutes of this film, bask in this anxiety laden
emotion.
Laundry,
the whole thing that sets off the catastrophic ending, is initiated with a
batch of laundry. Emily Blunt’s character, who’s baby is due any day now, pulls
up a nail with her laundry bag. Later on, her water breaks. In an attempt to
find out if her husband and son are close by, she hustles down to the basement
where all of their surveillance equipment is. Except, you guessed it, she steps
on the nail. From here, we are treated to non-stop action that manages to
escalate, take a short break, and then ramp right back to its peak in no time
at all, keeping its pace until the film ends.
A Quiet Place, at times, feels like a response to It Comes at Night. Where Shults wants
the audience to question the paranoia affecting his characters, Krasinski shows
in the first five minutes that his characters have every reason to be as afraid
as they are. Similarly, Krasinski’s monsters are shown outright in broad
daylight, whereas the ‘It’ in It Comes at
Night is completely ambiguous and left solely to the interpretation of the
viewer.
Both
tactics result in lukewarm projects though. With so many films saturating the
post-apocalyptic genre, it’s difficult to stand out. So, while A Quiet Place isn’t really attempting to
be anything more than it is, the fact that it is lacking in characterization and atmosphere, hurts it more than
it helps.
Krasinski’s
characters are interchangeable and lack any sort of depth. They are afflicted
with fear, tragedy, and loss, but given the world they inhabit, this isn’t
anything groundbreaking. As a result, the characters’ expendable nature dilutes
the tension in some scenes. While those scenes are still fraught with anxiety,
they also suffer from being extremely predictable. Any viewer who’s even
remotely versed in the horror/thriller genre, will be able to see nearly every
twist and turn the plot throws at them.
"This movie is really about, protecting your family. When I first read the script I was holding my baby, and I was crying." - John Kransinki
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| John Krasinski at Sundance 2016 Photo Suzanne Curry |
The film also relies somewhat on jump scares – some of which are egregiously false. They do peter out towards the film’s conclusion, but their inclusion in some of the earlier scenes doesn’t set a good precedent. To boot, the blatantly CGI monsters are a bit generic. One look at Stranger Things’ Demogorgon, the monster from 2017’s The Monster, or even the Mutos from 2014’s Godzilla, will reveal an altogether puzzling trend as none of the monsters in these films are particularly scary or disturbing either.
Ultimately,
what we end up with is a film that succeeds admirably in what it sets out to
accomplish. Casual horror/thriller fans will be shocked by the film’s twists
and feel their knuckles pop from their hands towards the film’s end. Conversely,
the same can’t be said for all veteran genre fans, as they may be left wanting
a little more out of the world and characters.
John
Krasinski is definitely a director to watch and it’s great to see his
career shift pay off for him so well. If he continues to employ the skills he
puts on display here, fans can look forward to what is sure to be an exciting
body of work.
3/5 STARS