Review #173: A Quiet Place (2018)

This review was originally written in 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #28: A Quiet Place (2018)

So, I have a lot of nitpicks about this movie, but I'll save that for the second part of the review. A Quiet Place is (more or less) a post-apocalyptic film about a family trying to get by after the world was invaded by deadly aliens that track by sound; more relatably, trying to find a place in the world after the loss of their youngest son a year earlier. This is a very evocative and engaging movie, on a first watch. The story has a lot of heart, the actors all play their parts fantastically, a lot of work was clearly put into the worldbuilding, and there are tons of small details that you might not notice at first that make the world feel more real. If you aren't going to put too much thought into the logistics of how this world would work or what the characters might have done better, then this is guaranteed to be an hour and a half of solid entertainment, and probably the most impressive part is that the filmmakers managed to tell a compelling story with almost no dialogue at all (with what little dialogue there is, being almost entirely told through sign language). No matter how you look at it, this is a well-made film, and deserves a lot of the credit it gets.

That being said...

...I specified that this movie is evocative and engaging, on a first watch. I've seen the movie twice (and heard a lot of discussion about it after the first time, which brought up a lot of the points I'm going to mention) and I would be lying if I said the second watch didn't make the whole thing come crashing down. In order for this film to be fun and engaging, you kind of have to turn parts of your brain off, because there's a LOT of VERY STUPID STUFF done in this movie. While it seems to follow a pretty strong train of logic at first, all of this logic FALLS APART BUTT OVER FEET the moment you start to put any amount of thought into it whatsoever.

Commence nitpicking. Skip to the end if that's not your thing.

Whoever wrote this film seems to think that nature, as a whole, is utterly silent, and there's only noise when we squishy humans knock over a lamp or put batteries into a spaceship. Nature is LOUD. I once went on a walk with my wife in the park and screamed at the top of my lungs and it still wasn't as loud as the cicadas all around us. Birds not only make noise, but THEY CAN FLY, something the aliens (which are called "Death Angels" apparently, WTF screenwriters, you can do better, I promise) can't do. Clearly wildlife is still able to thrive, because one early scene of the movie has a run-of-the-mill raccoon just scooting along minding its own business. So why does it seem like humans are the only ones who make noise in this film? Do the Death Angels attack every stick that falls off a tree and makes a noise on the ground? (Did the writers take "If a tree falls in a forest..." literally?) The very first scene of the movie even puts this front-and-center: the characters are all tiptoeing around a store to find medicine and supplies, taking care not to make any noise whatsoever, and then as they're walking out the door we see a newspaper noisily flapping in the breeze, and nobody seems concerned. Why would a toy spaceship falling off a shelf inside a building be a concern, but a flapping paper outside in the open not be? If the spaceship had fallen off the shelf completely on its own without any people around, would the aliens have shown up and smashed it? Or is there something specific about humanity that attracts them?

Because you have to acknowledge, the ENTIRE MOVIE is about the difficulties of not being able to make noise, and the difficulties that come with that (the inability to communicate easily, the inability to make use of the conveniences that allow us to live comfortably, the inability to even get away from danger without creating more danger, etc.). So although a lot of the negative discourse around this film can be easily dismissed or at least downplayed ("Of course they wouldn't just live next to the waterfall, the farm offered more benefits overall") it all ultimately comes down to: there's TONS of ways the characters could have made life easier for themselves, that would have taken basically no effort. But then there wouldn't be a movie.

For example: Why not just hang a speaker in a tall tree, and blast music or noise from it 24/7? The Death Angels clearly are not very smart and/or are more instinctual and animalistic, and there's plenty of places the family could put a speaker that's out of reach and without a clear weakness that these aliens would understand. (A human would know that there needs to be a power cable going to the speaker, but these things aren't smart enough to differentiate between a human two feet in front of them and a firework in a field half an acre away, so they probably wouldn't think to locate a string of cables- cables that would be utterly invisible to them due to not making sound- to disable a device they likely have no understanding of in the first place.) Because the protagonists of this movie have power, they have speakers, they have music devices- it's the exact same principle as the waterfall but allows them to make use of all of the benefits of the farm. (And that's off the top of my head, I guarantee there are other options too. Options you would definitely think of after years of living in this world, and options you would definitely try if your family's lives literally depended on it.) So when I'm able to come up with this in no time at all, why couldn't the writers? Did they intentionally ignore all of this so there would be a movie, or did they not think of the ramifications of their worldbuilding until too long after production had begun?

I'm gonna cut my ranting short, but I will say one more thing: I understand that most movies and TV are written by men, that's just a fact of life right now. But any prospective filmmakers out there: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE talk to a person that has given birth before, if you plan on writing a labor scene into your movie. The number of movies and TV episodes where a woman gives birth after a single push is TOO DAMN HIGH. If mothers were some rare commodity in this world and it was too hard to track one down to ask some questions before putting some media out into the world then maybe I could give this a pass, but I GUARANTEE all of you know at least one mother. Probably a dozen. Labor takes HOURS, in basically every case. HOURS. Hours hours HOURS, not minutes or seconds. One volley of fireworks, even perfectly timed, is not going to cover up an actual birth. (You know what would, though? A speaker up in a tree blasting the William Tell Overture 24/7.)

Anyway, just to recap, this is a great movie with a lot of heart, it just gets worse and worse the more brain you choose to use on it.

Overall Rating: 7/10 Unopened Bags of Chips

Fun Anecdote For This Film: The first time we watched A Quiet Place, it was a copy we... ahem... acquired on the high seas, and it had no subtitles, including the scenes with sign language. I went the whole movie assuming it was an interesting directorial choice to let those scenes tell their story through context alone, and I was impressed! Then we found out later that normally you're supposed to be able to understand those parts. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, the physical characterization is good enough that it doesn't necessarily need subtitles!