It will scare you.
A Quiet Place
Grade: B+
Director: John Krasinski (The Hollars)
Screenplay: Krasinski, Bryan Woods (Nightlight), Scott Beck (The Bride Wore Blood)
Cast: Emily Blunt (The Girl on the Train), Krasinski (Detroit)
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hr 30 min
by John DeSando
“Who are we if we can’t protect them?” Evelyn (Emily Blunt)
As a thriller/horror film, A Quiet Place has its allegorical implications, in this case the parental imperative to protect children. Blind monsters plague the Abbott family, who dare not make a sound because those bad boys have acute hearing, with outsized ears to prove it, in their quest for food, human or otherwise.
In this above average nail-biter, writer/director John Krasinski is a deft suspense purveyor, ratcheting it up as the family gets closer to greeting the monsters in person. In adherence to the formula, the suspense builds from establishing the problem that the monsters have put the family in defensive mode, to the inevitable standoff.
Blunt and Krasinski (playing husband, Lee) are effective as a loving but challenged couple with two children and one on the way. Because the stars are married in real life, a close bond on film may be the reason they are so good in their roles. Because this is a horror film, our sympathy for the besieged fodder is enhanced by their real marriage.
The irony that complete quiet is the bane of the monsters is appropriate for millennials, who would wither if their smart phones were not noisily distracting them every hour of the day.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
