Review: A QUIET PLACE

A QUIET PLACE
(THRILLER/HORROR) 
★★★1/2
Directed by John Krasinski
Screenplay by Bryan Woods & Scott Beck and John Krasinski
Story by Bryan Woods & Scott Beck
Starring: John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Cade Woodward, Leon Russom
Rated PG-13 for terror and some bloody images.
90 minutes
Verdict: A simple, visceral and emotional thriller that builds on its promising high concept with stellar performances.

Despite becoming widely recognizable for his role as workplace prankster Jim Halpert in the U.S. version of The Office, John Krasinski's had a rough go of it breaking into movies, consistently landing in roles in lukewarm failures like 13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI and LEATHERHEADS or out and out failures like LICENSE TO WED and ALOHA.  Sometimes in movies, to get the good roles, you've got to give them to yourself (Ben Affleck knows all about that), but while John Krasinski's role in A QUIET PLACE, which he also directed, co-wrote and executive produced, is good, it's not an especially meaty role.  Nothing about A QUIET PLACE is like that.  It's simple and broad, but highly visceral and emotional.
The context of the situation is minimal.  When the film opens, a title card indicates that it's been 89 days since whatever is happening started happening.  Civilization has broken down and only a few scattered families still survive in the area where the story takes place.  Mysterious, seemingly unbeatable creatures stalk everything that still survives, and though the creatures are blind, any sound louder than a couple dozen decibels brings them running to tear apart whatever animal life is the source.  The Abbott family communicates with sign language, and the parents, Lee (John Krasinski) and Evelyn (Emily Blunt), lay down paths of flour to walk silently on barefooted wherever they go and feel the weight of responsibility as parents while they strive to prepare their children to survive.  In the film's prologue, a scavenging trip into a nearby town ends in tragedy for the Abbott family, before the story jumps forward a year.  Each member of the family is still dealing with the guilt of what happened, and Evelyn is pregnant with another child, adding to their oldest, Regan (played by deaf actress Millicent Simmonds), who deals with the added complication of being deaf with a broken Cochlear implant and feels particularly responsible, and their current youngest, Marcus (Noah Jupe).

Although I can't really explain why, A QUIET PLACE feels more like a thriller to me than a horror movie, but that line is so constantly blurred.  There are jump scares and frequent tension, as well as supernatural plot elements, but something about it feels not quite in the same realm as what I could easily identify as horror.  Watching the trailer, with images of people walking barefoot along white pathways in the woods and an unseen menace, I assumed it would be a more surreal, almost fairy tale-like story, but it's strangely more grounded than that, for the most part.  It's a slick remix of many familiar things and reminded me of movies like SIGNS, THE WITCH and 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE.  It could easily have been the next Cloverfield movie (it's a whole lot better than THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX), and maybe it wouldn't have hurt if it were, but it's great that it's not.  
It's a movie that's easy to nitpick, and if it's okay to speak next to a waterfall because the sound of the waterfall drowns them out, I'm not sure why they can't just get a bunch of noise cancelling machines like therapist offices have, but if most of the movie is working, there's no point in bringing it all crashing down over something like that.  The creature designs are fine, nothing special (I guess I connected the trails with Temple Run and was hoping they'd be more like that freaky four-armed ape thing).

Where the movie succeeds on top of its promising concept is the creation and payoff of tension and the performances, all of which are very good while, with so little dialogue, most of the acting comes through the face and body language.  Blunt (married to Krasinski in real life, so, you know, nepotism), in particular, is a standout.  The screenplay, co-written by Krasinski from a spec script by Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, keeps things simple from start to finish, allowing for the bulk of substance to come from the family relationships and emotions folded into the tension-based set-pieces.  It's a movie with big emotions that work thanks to its performances, and never unnecessarily complicates things, even if it occasionally becomes a little silly.  It's produced by Michael Bay (who directed Krasinski in 13 HOURS), and while critics will blame him when TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES was bad, most of them probably won't give him any credit for A QUIET PLACE being good, but to be fair, only the last couple minutes of the movie feel anything like some Bay would do.  The visual effects are also better and more extensive than you'd expect from this kind of stripped-down horror movie (thriller, whatever), which Bay could probably be thanked for as well.
A QUIET PLACE keeps things moving efficiently throughout its refreshing 90-minute runtime, never wasting a minute as it world-builds and draws out tension ahead of each emotional climax, only to start again, in a story about family crisis in the middle of a worldwide existential crisis.

                                                                                                                                                                 Images via Paramount