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. (more…)
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