A Quiet Place - Krasinski, Blunt, shhhhhh

We saw this last night on an off showing on Thursday evening. It was the perfect time, maybe 20 people in the theater and the silence of the movie really overwhelms you and amps the eventual noise. We both enjoyed it. I think it was well done, with some slow exposition and decent cinematography. The actors all were great, especially the mother during … the scene. By the end I felt they were stacking the intensity a bit, but I still enjoyed it.

The best comment of the night was as we were leaving, when my girlfriend turned to me and said, “but what if they were gassy?” You heard it here first folks. A Quiet Place 2: Bean Farm.

“OK, family, we’re at the waterfall. If you need to fart, sneeze, vomit, or scream bloody murder at your sister… do it now! Your Mom and I will be behind that rock making our own set of sounds, do NOT investigate!”

That would be me as I rarely see these kinds of movies but I like Emily Blunt and she did a fine job.

I had a similar thought; I half expected Krasinski to fart to break the tension with his son when they were at the river.

Anyway, I mostly liked this, but the third act didn’t seem to be as strict with the rules about the monsters and sound, which is a pretty big annoyance when so much tension comes from these strict rules for how the danger works in the first two thirds of the film. Most egregiously, I couldn’t figure out why the monster attacked Krasinski after he took the axe or whatever that was from the shed. That’s a pretty important moment to leave me wondering “wait, why did the monsters suddenly behave that way?”

Smaller annoyances include: how in the world did Krasinski not notice the water pouring into the basement as he was leaving to find the kids? If you spend so much time in silence, you’d absolutely be attuned to any out of the ordinary sound.

And I also didn’t quite understand the layout of the house/farm/basement/other/basement for a while. I didn’t realize that the “lab” basement was in the house and separate from the basement where they lived and kept the baby out in the farm. So thinking that was one location, I was confused about what was down the stairs where the daughter tried to go and Krasinski stopped her. I was waiting for some reveal there, until I finally put together that it was the lab, and then I was just curious in retrospect why Krasinski made such a big deal about it. His reaction to the daughter heading that direction seemed disproportionate for it just being the lab, I expected something more dangerous, and then it undercut the significance I think the movie wanted me to feel when the daughter sees how hard he’d been working on hearing aids. Like, duh, wasn’t that already obvious by how often he was bringing her new ones?

But mostly this was good and the tension was effective, very effective for the first 2/3.

Peter Watts reviews the movie. Spoilers ahoy.

I had the exact same problem. And I still don’t understand why he didn’t want the daughter to go into the basement.

He got this part wrong:

  • They can rip a gaping hole through the corrugated steel wall of a grain silo (silently enough to avoid alerting the children trapped inside, so as to not deprive us of an upcoming jump scare), but can’t get into the cab of a Ford pick-up with the windows rolled up.
  • Or maybe that ragged, torn hole in the silo was there all along in plain view, and the children trapped inside were just too dumb to notice until it was filled by a nightmare creature.

The alien dropped down from the top, it didn’t come in by ripping a hole in the side. The hole in the side was how the alien escaped when the hearing-aid interference started driving it crazy. And it was about to rip into the cap of the pick-up, it wasn’t attacking for long before the dad got its attention.

So the nit I have left to pick after thoroughly enjoying the movie is this:

We know once the real story get’s going it has been over a year, 370 or 390 days; something like that. Yet the farm has full rows of crops stretching as far as the eye can see. Neat and tidy like you’d have if you used a tractor and all of that. Even assuming they didn’t use a tractor no way in hell they could have done all of that by hand and silently.

I had that same nit earlier, I feel you. Especially so when they panned up to cover a wider angle shot of the farm and their fields were huge. There would have been no monopoly. The entire family would be slaving away for 16 hours days just to get a fraction of that farm going.

I liked this a lot, but I have to say the ending revelation seems kinda obvious in retrospect? Like, hmm, these things attack us based on sound, and it never occurred to any scientists or generals anywhere to…

(Upload a Mac floppy disc based virus to the alien spaceship, obviously)

You have to smoke a cigar too, that’s part of the process for success, apparently.

I do not like horror movies, but this one did the tension thing real good. But you’re right the weakness was glaringly obvious. I also don’t buy that they were protected by some skin that was bulletproof vs. everything. Depleted uranium will bust through anything. And the pressures you get even with super big conventional explosives can implode anything.

Anyway, a good low budget, leave your brain at the door, movie. I liked the premise, but it didn’t fully deliver.

Got some time off and hiked 15 miles into the Cloud Peak Wilderness. Parked my tent by a lake at 10,000 feet and watched this as night started to fall and thunderstorms scraped over the tops of the granite walls around me. I was hoping that I’d be creeped out (fun!) since I was by myself, but this didn’t give me any heebie jeebies.

Still, while I didn’t find it scary, and even though it was very telegraphed, I did enjoy it overall. Good acting and an interesting version of the Stranger Things critter.

Just saw it. Yea like allot of horror flicks you can nitpick the premise but this is the type of horror/thriller flick I enjoy. The main thing being actually good acting, and caring about the characters. This movie fits in that slot like The Conjuring does with it being a family and not a random group of moron teenagers getting picked off.

Saw it twice, once with the wife and then the kid. Pretty good. Everyone commented that the sound and music was great. Good action the last half.

Finally saw this last night. Good movie, even with the nitpicks already discussed above.

I’d be 100% toast in this world because I snore. I feel like they should have been able to build a better anti-alien home after more than a year though. They managed to hang up all those warning lights all over the fields & house. I also would have loved to see more of the surrounding area. Was that old couple the only humanity nearby? I’m surprised they didn’t try to relocate to the coast at some point, find a houseboat, etc.

There is a scene during the movie when they light a fire, I believe it’s on the silo. They slowly pan out and you see other fires in the distance. I thought that was a nod to the fact there are other survivors, but it has been a while and I hope I’m not misremembering that.

That was my interpretation of that scene as well.

Could only build what wouldn’t cause noise. Can’t do much hammering.

(Language NSFW)

I totally agree with this.

-xtien