Butler's Cinema Scene

Emily Blunt

“A QUIET PLACE” My rating: B

90 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

A big idea will take you farther than a big budget. That was the lesson of last year’s “Get Out” and, on a somewhat more modest scale, of the creepily claustrophobic “A Quiet Place.”

Co-written and directed by John Krasinski, who stars with real-life wife Emily Blunt, “Quiet…” is an intimate post-apocalyptic tale that examines the dynamic of a besieged family. It was made with limited resources; happily talent was not one of the rationed goods.

We first meet the clan — I don’t believe their names are ever mentioned — as they quietly pillage through the remains of an abandoned town.  Emphasize the “quietly” part.

Some sort of alien invasion or government experiment gone bad has unleashed nasty spider-like creatures (we don’t get a good look at them until late in the proceedings) who have an insatiable appetite for mammalian blood.  Only three months after these creatures made their appearance, the human race is teetering on the edge of extinction.

This particular family — Mom (Blunt), Dad (Krasinski), Big Sister (Millicent Simmonds) and Little Brother (Noah Jupe) —  have survived in large part because Big Sister is hearing impaired and the other family members are fluent in sign language. They are able to silently communicate with their hands (what conversation the film offers is rendered in subtitles) and this has allowed them to elude the marauding invaders, who are sightless but have  a finely developed sense of hearing.

After a jarring prologue we find the characters living on a farm, spending much of their time in a basement bunker. They don’t wear shoes (bare feet make less noise) and move with slow deliberation.  They have laid paths of sand around the farmstead…sand absorbs the sound of footsteps.

John Krasinski, Noah Jupe

“A Quiet Place” has two or three scenes of near-unbearable tension as the humans confront their blind adversaries, but it’s in the non-dramatic moments that the full force of their situation becomes clear.

These folk cannot indulge in laughter, weeping or even a little nonchalant toe-tapping, all of which might attract a hungry alien. Their emotions must be as dampered as their sounds of existence.

Small wonder that Big Sister is a twisted knot of fury.  In addition to the usual adolescent issues she carries a load of guilt over a death in the family. And Little Brother has been so traumatized by fear that he can barely function. (The young actors are terrific, by the way.)

Krasinski and co-writers Bryan Woods and Scott Beck have done a nifty job of laying out the means by which the family members feed and protect themselves. Alas, in a major case of narrative fumbling they never explain how it is that the farm still has electricity to power lights and surveillance cameras.  Can’t be a generator…that would be too noisy.

The good news is that Krasinski’s direction — and the performances of the entire cast — is so effective that most viewers won’t even ask that nagging question.

Blunt in particular has a knockout sequence in which she must give birth silently while one of the creatures rummages through the house. It’s nifty example of white-knuckle filmmaking.

There’s even a moment of gentle romance reminiscent of the Harrison Ford/Kelly McGillis barn scene in “Witness”; here Mom and Dad slow dance to a Neil Young song playing on an iPod…each of them gets an earbud.

Mostly “A Quiet Place” offers pure visual storytelling, although one cannot discount the contribution of the sound department…after all this is a world so quiet we can hear leaves rustle and the horrific clicking noises of an approaching monster.

| Robert W. Butler