Photo: Paramount Pictures
* This post includes spoilers for A Quiet Place.
John Krasinski was not a likely candidate to direct one of the year’s most anticipated horror films, and yet, A Quiet Place premiered at this year’s SXSW festival to jubilant reviews, earning a near perfect critical rating as it sails into its opening weekend — where it’s slated to take the top box-office spot from Steven Spielberg’s gargantuan Ready Player One. So how did the Jim from Dunder Mifflin pull off this critical and box-office coup? By making a pure hit of horror adrenaline shot straight into the mainline.
The script, which Krasinski rewrote from a first draft by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, is a well-executed study in tension, and it’s given emotional heft by the onscreen dynamic he shares with his real-life partner, Emily Blunt. Together they play Evelyn and Lee, married parents of two with a baby on the way, who are doing everything they can to make a good life for their children — while keeping them safe from lightning-fast monsters that seem to have overrun the whole planet. But the real kick of A Quiet Place is its perfect driving conceit: The monsters hunt by sound, and anything above whisper decibel will draw them in.
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It’s almost too obvious to say, but sound is central to horror. If those screeching strings hadn’t been playing over the top of Norman Bates stabbing Marion Crane, would we even be talking about Psycho today? And so it follows that the absence of noise is just as important. When no one is making a sound in a horror movie, you hold your breath, lest you tip off the killer all the way from the other side of the screen. Krasinski blew that feeling up and turned it into an entire plot: When making noise anywhere at any time is life-threatening, an egg timer is enough to bring down life as you know it. It makes sense, then, that the movie’s best scene is one that includes an inopportunely placed nail and a woman going into contractions.
Evelyn is nine months pregnant, because A Quiet Place wasn’t stressful enough without labor and the threat of a screaming newborn. The film starts with a “normal” evening of chores for Evelyn, when the absolute worst thing happens: With her husband and children out of the house, Evelyn’s water breaks. She instinctively heads for the AV command center in the basement of the house to fire up the SOS signal (a strand of red globe lights that snake across the property), and on her way down the old wooden stairs, Blunt’s character lands with the full weight of her step on an upright nail. Everyone in A Quiet Place goes shoeless to mitigate noise, meaning the spike instantly buries itself several inches into Evelyn’s exposed foot. With the sonic stakes extraordinarily high, that cursed nail becomes “as lethal as an unexploded bomb,” as the New York Times put it.
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Evelyn stifles a scream, but drops a picture frame on the floor, resulting in an audible shatter. And now we know all hell is going to come down on her. One of the beasts enters the home and makes its way downstairs, leaving bleeding, birthing, horrified Evelyn to bury herself silently in a corner until her improvised trap — a kitchen timer — goes off, distracting the monster long enough for her to exit up the stairs. If you broke this scene out as a short film from A Quiet Place, it could stand on its own. It makes the movie’s figurative claustrophobia literal, compressing the action into a single, small concrete room. Krasinski’s script doesn’t try to overwhelm you with blood, so the nail in the foot really delivers a system shock after you’ve spent most of the movie afraid of falling lanterns. The domino effect — the way one misstep can lead to a torrent of calamities — reinforces how dangerous the in-world threat is, even after you start to get used to the rules. And more than anything, the scene makes excellent use of the film’s biggest asset: Emily Blunt.
Krasinski knows his wife and star is his greatest resource, and the anxiety he wrings out of her is the lighter fluid that ignites A Quiet Place. At first, when Krasinski was originally discussing the film with Blunt, she’d recommended other actresses to play Evelyn, but then took another pass at her director husband’s script and staked her claim to the part. Whenever the camera hones in on Blunt for a long, stressful take, the movie hits a new peak.
Evelyn does eventually escape the basement, and hobbles her way to a bathroom upstairs, presumably while a baby is crowning. Blunt hunkering down in the tub has become the movie’s signature visual, but it’s her harrowing injury and encounter in the basement that catalyzes A Quiet Place’s most emotionally exhausting run — and sets up what might be single-most cathartic scream you’ll see in a movie this year.
Photo: Paramount Pictures
Horror movies tend to require a suspension of disbelief, and some of them even thrive on it. When a final girl wanders into a room she shouldn’t, or a besieged family simply refuses to move out of their haunted house, it’s delicious to share in that frustration with a vocal audience. “Don’t go in there!” “Watch out!” “Why are you running upstairs and not out the front door?”
John Krasinski’s new horror film A Quiet Place is expertly staged, well-reviewed, and predicted to make a bundle at the box office, but it, too, has its fair share of shout-at-the-screen stumpers. Still, I was willing to accept most of them. Does it make any sense that Emily Blunt would get pregnant if she’s living in a post-apocalyptic world where sound-sensitive beasts will kill her family when the newborn makes a single noise? Not really, but think of the suspense! Are those monsters as swift or slow as the plot demands? Yes, they are, but you just have to go with it. And who, exactly, keeps giving Blunt a salon-blonde dye job in this dystopia? I kept waiting to find out, but the phantom hairdresser remained stubbornly offscreen.
There was one suspension of disbelief, though, that was simply too much for me to buy. I’ll admit that it was a stupid preoccupation, but I couldn’t shake this nagging thought while watching A Quiet Place.
Why didn’t they ever wear socks?
For the entirety of the film, Krasinski, Blunt, and their two young children go barefoot so the big-eared but blind monsters outside their home won’t hear the family’s footsteps. (They even go so far as to build a trail of soft sand wherever they walk.) Obviously, it makes sense for these people to not wear shoes. Shoes are noisy, duh! It’s the apocalypse, honey: Time to throw out those Louboutins!
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Buuuut … shouldn’t they at least be wearing socks? As any sneaky kid knows all too well, a nice pair of soft socks make your footsteps even quieter, especially if you’re slapping those feet down onto hard surfaces on the regular. I just walked around my house with one sock on and one sock off (we run only the finest, most rigorous scientific tests on Vulture) and the socked foot made so much less noise on my hardwood floors that it wasn’t even a contest. Ask any parent who wants to keep his newborn’s nap undisturbed, or any pet owner who hopes to tiptoe to the fridge without alerting her dog: Socks are the way to go.
Not to mention the hygiene issues! If Krasinski and Blunt’s weary survivors still want to keep it lit in the bedroom — and to judge by Blunt’s pregnant belly, not even the apocalypse will prevent her from Pamming it up with Jim from The Office — maybe they should get some socks on those grimy-ass feet! Put a little effort in, and your spouse surely will thank you.
Perhaps Krasinski thought the sockless look was more cinematic, or maybe he felt that walking around in bare feet made the characters more vulnerable. Still, if he wanted me to take this family’s survivalist strategies more seriously, someone might have tried on a damn pair of socks once in a while. I don’t doubt that if this film is a hit, we’ll see A Quieter Place green-lit sooner rather than later. Let’s hope that for the sequel, they manage to pour a sand trail up the stairs to the sock drawer.
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Emily Blunt had to get husband John Krasinski to “fire” a rival actress to make way for her to star in his horror film “A Quiet Place,” she revealed on a U.K. chat show Friday. Appearing on the first episode in a new season of British chat show “The Graham Norton Show” to promote the film, the actress said she had to insist Krasinski, who directed and co-stars in the film, fire another actress to allow her to take the role. Although Blunt did not name the actress she said she was a “good friend.”
Sitting beside Krasinski on the show, which was recorded Thursday, Blunt said she had initially been reluctant to appear in the horror film when her husband pitched it to her as she had just given birth to the couple’s second daughter, Violet, and was about to start shooting “Mary Poppins Returns” so felt “in a state of joy.”
“I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to the darkness of the pitch that he’d given me for this film,” Blunt told Norton, revealing that she had recommended he approach a friend of hers for the role, which he did. “Then I read the script and I was like ‘you need to call her and fire her’.” Blunt said she was still friends with the unnamed actress.
“I’d heard she was a diva,” joked Krasinski.
Blunt also said she had felt terrified to take on the iconic role of Mary Poppins originated by Julie Andrews. “It felt thrilling and scary at the same time,” said the British actress.
“A Quiet Place” opens in the U.S., U.K. and other markets this weekend. “The Graham Norton Show” airs Friday nights in the U.K. on BBC One.
Horror-thriller “A Quiet Place” has opened with an impressive $4.3 million at 2,740 North American locations in Thursday night preview showings, while “Blockers” took in $1.5 million at 2,650 sites in previews.
Paramount Pictures’ “A Quiet Place,” starring John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, has been forecasted to debut with as much as $30 million from 3,508 locations. The film, which opened at South by Southwest to rave reviews, currently boasts a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
“The Office” star Krasinski directed the story of an isolated family of four who must live in silence while hiding from creatures that hunt by sound. Surveys by comScore’s Screen Engine-PostTrak showed 50% of the Thursday night audience rated “A Quiet Place” as “excelllent” and another 33% called it “very good” with 63% saying they would give it a “definitely” recommend the movie.
“This is a terrific start for ‘A Quiet Place’ and shows what happens when strong buzz and one of the most popular genres (namely horror) intersect to create a ‘must see’ moviegoing event,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with comScore.
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The preview number for “A Quiet Place” is better than the $4 million that “Annabelle: Creation” grossed in Thursday night showings on its way to a $35 million opening weekend last August.
Universal’s “Blockers” is expected to pull in between $16 million and $20 million at 3,379 theaters. Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz, and John Cena play parents trying to stop their teen daughters’ pact to lose their virginity on prom night.
“Blockers” marks the directorial debut of Kay Cannon, who wrote the “Pitch Perfect” trilogy. It was produced by Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen, and James Weaver, and is currently averaging 82% on Rotten Tomatoes.
“Blockers,” which also debuted last month at South by Southwest, is probably going to be in a battle for second place with the sophomore weekend of Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One.” The Warner Bros. sci-fi movie has grossed $68.3 million domestically in its first week
Entertainment Studios’ drama “Chappaquiddick” opened with $175,000 at 1,146 sites in Thursday night previews. “Chappaquiddick” is aiming for $4 million at 1,560 locations during the weekend.
Jason Clarke portrays Ted Kennedy while Kate Mara plays Mary Jo Kopechne, who died in the 1969 car accident. The film has received solid critical support with an 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The overall domestic box office has declined by 4.4% to $2.94 billion as of April 4, according to comScore. Disney-Marvel’s “Black Panther” has been the year’s major success story with $655.6 million in seven weeks with five straight weekend victories.
“Black Panther” should take in about $7 million in its eighth weekend and top “Titanic” as the third-largest domestic grosser of all time, behind only “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “Avatar.”
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