(Emily
Blunt)
Silence has never been more terrifying in
this riveting post-apocalyptic thriller. (Review by Patrick Compton – 9/10)
In this time of noisy Hollywood
blockbusters, it’s a real pleasure to celebrate silence in John Krasinki’s
suspenseful and unusual thriller (with a dash of horror), A Quiet Place.
The action takes place in the future after
an unnamed apocalypse in the United States. Only small bands of humans survive
in a blasted landscape also occupied by vicious predators (not dissimilar to
those that populated Ridley Scott’s Alien
series). The creatures are blind, but they have super-sensitive hearing that
means, in effect, that if you sneeze you lose ... your life.
The traumatic pre-credit sequence
introduces us to the Abbott family whose (mis)fortunes we follow. The parents,
Lee and Evelyn (played by Krasinski and his real-life wife, Emily Blunt), have
a son, the fearful Marcus (Noah Jupe), a hearing-impaired daughter, Regan (deaf
actress Millicent Simmonds) and the youngest of them all, Beau (Cade Woodward).
After this sequence, we move forward a year
and a massive hurdle beckons ... Evelyn is pregnant and the pressing concern is
whether she can have a baby without anaesthetic and, even more important,
without uttering any cries of pain and exertion.
Enough of the plot – which has plenty more
length to run – but I can reveal that the movie ends on a brilliantly
provocative note that should leave audiences thirsting for more.
The monsters could have been the main
visual focus of the film, but Krasinski has cleverly presented them as barely
discernable flashes of malevolence, almost figments of the family’s
imagination. Even when they are in plain sight, he focuses on unexpected
close-ups, detailing the creatures’ monstrous ears, orifices that enable them
to detect sound from distance.
Underpinning the constant tension audiences
will feel as the family tries to minimise the noise they make, are the
relationships between them. Without giving anything away, Regan’s deafness –
and her frequently malfunctioning hearing aid – are the keys to the movie and
Simmonds’s brilliantly authentic performance is suitably impressive. In the
main, communication is by sign language, but there are certain exceptions to
this, resulting in feelings of both liberation and trauma.
The existential threat of the monsters is,
of course, a major selling point, but so too are the nuanced relationships of
the family members. Blunt is effective as the pregnant mother whose main focus
is on protecting her family – including the developing foetus in her womb –
while Simmonds is simply remarkable as her agonised daughter. For his part,
Krasinski deserves massive plaudits, not only for his starring role as the
father, but even more importantly for his script and superb direction. He is
certainly a talent to follow.
It would be no exaggeration to say that A Quiet Place is the best and most
unusual thriller that I am likely to see this year.
A
Quiet Place opened in Durban on April 6 and is
showing at Gateway, Pavilion, Suncoast and Musgrave. - Patrick Compton
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