A Quiet Place (2018)

I saw A Quiet Place at the theater yesterday and I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it! Bottom line: it was a good movie, but I had some issues with it that kind of soured me on the film.

I would suggest if you have any interest at all, be like me: don't watch trailers or read reviews, just go and see it without knowing what you're getting into - you'll probably really like it (as almost all of the reviews I've seen attest to). Definitely don't read this review first, which is going to have LOTS of spoilers!

For those of you who have seen it, or don't care about spoilers (do people like that exist?)... here is my SPOILER FILLED review... with spoilers! Don't say I didn't warn you.

SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!

SO the thing that kind of soured a lot of the movie for me happened right at the beginning, so I will mostly describe that in detail while I complain. Here is your final SPOILER WARNING! (Seriously, if you can go into this film blind, do it!) (To be fair, mostly I am only spoiling the first ten minutes, so even if you do read on without having seen the movie first, it's not gonna be life ending.)

Okay so the movie starts off on "Day 89", as a title card helpfully supplies, with a family in a grocery store getting some supplies. Everyone is being very quiet. It is clearly post-apocalypse, even though the type of apocalypse is not immediately obvious (it's aliens/monsters that find hunt by sound, as we will soon learn). The dad (John Krazinski) does not seem to be in the store? I guess he was in another store. Yes, definitely splitting up is always the smartest move, post-apocalypse. The mom (Emily Blunt) is getting meds for the sick middle child; the oldest child (who is deaf and, you know, couldn't hear if there were monsters around) is walking around by herself; as is the youngest - a four year old boy.

Here is my problem that some may not be bothered by but kind of ruins the movie for me: ask yourself, in a post apocalyptic world, how often would you let your four year old child out of your site? Every parent I've asked (okay, two - my own) said "Never." I am not a parent, but I still say never. This movie, the plot of which heavily relies on the parental love of these parents, thinks it's acceptable that they just let their four year old run around and do whatever!

Now, if we were on day 1000 of the apocalypse and this kid knew the rules on How To Survive from birth, then okay, maybe give him a little leeway. This kid clearly doesn't get it though - in the first ten minutes of the movie he makes two almost life ending mistakes (and a third successful one) all involving a toy rocket. The first - he is standing on an upturned laundry basket to get the toy off a high shelf. He knocks the toy off. Luckily, the deaf kid slides in at the last second to catch the toy before it hits the floor. She puts it back on the shelf. Dad (who watches this from the entrance of the store) shows up from wherever, says hi then tells the four year old (in sign language - oh just for your information, this movie is almost entirely subtitled because everyone speaks sign language - there are only a few lines of spoken dialogue. It's pretty well done. Okay back to my whining) he says to the kid "go find your mother" while he hangs back to chat with the deaf kid. A minute later, Mom and sick kid meet up with Dad and deaf kid at the entrance of the store. They all look over at the four year old who did not "go find mom" and is instead walking over to them with that damn toy rocket - only this time he has silently put batteries in it (somehow - because God knows those things are never included). Dad takes the toy, takes the batteries out (*whew*, that was tense), and signs "too loud" before setting both the toy and batteries on a counter right next to the four year old. He then gives the boy a loving pat and carries the sick middle kid out of the store. Mom gives the four year old a sympathetic look and... follows dad out of the store,,,? Deaf kid looks around, sees the coast is clear because MOM AND DAD JUST LEFT THE DEAF KID AND FOUR YEAR OLD TO FOLLOW BEHIND THEM and gives the toy back to the four year old cause why shouldn't the kid have a toy? Then she WALKS OUT OF THE STORE. Four year old looks around - the coast is still clear because remember everyone just bailed on this four year old - and grabs the goddamn batteries for the toy before trailing out of the store, fairly far behind everyone else.

Okay, I'm getting mad all over again, so I'm going to sum up what happens next: mom and dad glance back, see their kids are trailing single-file maybe 30 or 50 feet behind them and think "yeah, this makes sense in an apocalypse" and keep walking. They do not notice the four year old hastily jam the toy into his coat. They certainly don't notice a little later on when he pulls it out and puts the batteries in it, but oh boy do they hear it when he turns it on and the little bleeps and bloops start going off. Everyone has a moment of panic (deaf kid last because she only knows something wrong when she sees everyone in front of her looking back in horror - hey, you think that maybe someone who could hear might have heard the kid putting batteries into the toy? I GUESS WE'LL NEVER KNOW) before Dad starts running for the kid, but he's way too far away to get to him before the kid gets eaten.

Okay. I understand that the movie writers did this to let the audience know the stakes (be quiet or die), and also let us know that NO ONE in this film is safe if a four year old kid is gonna bite it in the first ten minutes. I guess my problem is this: I like most movies. I usually find it very easy to suspend belief and enjoy the ride. However, when people do really stupid or out of character things for no reason, it immediately makes me too angry to just go with the flow. The only thing we really ever learn about these parents during the movie is that they love each other and their kids. So why - WHY - were they walking in a formation that leaves their deaf child and their four year old walking at the tail end of the line? And even in the opening scene when I didn't know their only character trait was familial love - WHY WERE THOSE IDIOTS NOT PAYING MORE ATTENTION TO THEIR KIDS???

So anyway, the movie then jumps ahead like a year and a half after that incident. Dad and deaf kid aren't getting along great because deaf kid blames herself (she really shouldn't) and she thinks Dad blames her (he mostly doesn't). Oh, and Mom's pregnant again at this point, so you can imagine how high the stakes are going to be for this family pretty soon. And terror ensues!

My only other problem was the fact that I think aliens that can only hunt by sound seem like they'd be pretty easy to defeat (literally this is their only way - someone is bleeding later in the movie and that does nothing for them, so they can't even smell!). Off the top of my head, you could set up a bunch of explosives in a building, then turn on a radio in the room at a center of it, lure a bunch in, and blow them up. That would definitely work on these creatures, they are so dumb that they will jump to whatever sound is loudest/most recent even if they are actively about to get someone that was making noise mere seconds before! BUT, aside from that, the movie was good. The pacing was good, the acting was good, the scares were good, things that were set up paid off later. It was... good.

Bottom line: I recognize it was a pretty decent horror movie that I think a lot of people will like, and I hope it does well because I am always pro-major releases for horror movies, but it made some classic blunders that I just can't abide! I'll give it another shot someday when it shows up on Netflix, and maybe my feelings will have changed, but but for now... I didn't like it, and that kind of bums me out!

What did you think?

PS: It's funny the fact that the creatures hunt only by sound bothered me so much - I really liked Signs, which everyone pointed out was dumb because why would aliens who are so easily killed by water come to a planet with so much of it? I even dreamed about this movie last night - I was just picking apart endless things that weren't even in the movie! I have a feeling that first scene made me question a lot of other things that I wouldn't necessarily have been bothered by in another movie.