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A Quiet Place



A Quiet Place
Monster Horror / English, Sign Language / 2018

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
I don't remember, but I stumbled on a clip for Part 2 and decided to check it out.

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
"Who are we if we can't protect them?"

This is another gimmick monster movie, this time with the not-so-original theme that the monsters are blind, but very good at hearing.

It seems a little bit on the nose for one of the main characters to be deaf, but I suppose it gives the cast an excuse to communicate in mostly sign language which leaves me confused about what is going on because I don't know sign language.

Right off the bat we learn that there's some sort of conflict between Deaf Girl and Office Dad where Deaf Girl's not allowed in the basement where he's working on hearing aids and she's also not allowed on trips out to catch fish (which is also a strike against the movie).

Right about when we FINALLY hear some actual dialog out of the characters' mouths during this often silent movie, Son #2 asks Office Dad directly why she couldn't leave with them and he doesn't answer the question. The movie eventually ended and I never figured out why she couldn't be in the basement either. And what tragedy of ironies it is that OF COURSE as soon as she enters the basement she figures out the monsters are weak to audio feedback.

Seems really ****in' cheap. I might reason that feedback itself is the main reason she wasn't allowed in the basement, but she straight up refuses to wear a hearing aid in the one scene they're offered to her, and we learn later that the one she was given straight up doesn't work. So Office Dad can't even test his homebrew inventions and for whatever reason she doesn't want to wear them anyway!

This movie also suffers from what I will now title:



Apocalypse Mom Syndrome

This is a disorder affecting women in apocalypse films, where it's clearly established that the environment is unsuitable for children, but the bitch gets pregnant anyway. This is proven by the movie repeatedly stating that this is over 400 days into the "apocalypse" (which is a word I feel we're abusing at this point).

This is especially obnoxious when the scenes of her youngest son getting eaten and her giving birth in a tub with monsters outside the room are among THE scenes most heavily circulated as marketing material. And then of course we get a scene where the newborn baby's cries attract the monsters too. You realize lives could have been saved if you kept your ****ing legs together?

Not like Office Dad's out of the marshes either, he's clearly got a role to play, and I'm still baffled as to why he had to die. He clearly has time to usher his kids off to hiding places, but then he just stands around in the open waiting for the monsters to come to him.

This movie wasn't AWFUL, but so many different components are done so much better in other movies. I don't know why Metropolis is so much easier to understand when the characters are flailing concepts at each other, but it is. And finally, in terms of the central gimmick of the movie... Tremors did it better.

Tremors had a third dimension to the monsters being that they're limited to movement underground and only anything immediately accessible through bare earth. It was also a fantastic excuse to show the monsters very sparingly. The sequels expanded on this too, but giving the monsters varying "lifecycle stages" similar to xenomorphs.

It's an okay movie, and credit to Office Dad for being able to act beyond just Office Jim, but I don't see a reason to watch it ever again.


EDIT: Oh and the corn silo scene was fricken's stupid. I dunno, I'm feeling generous.

Final Verdict:
[Okay]