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.
'A Quiet Place' Will Leave You Shhhhhhaken
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jonny Cournoyer/Paramount Pictures Jonny Cournoyer/Paramount Pictures
Limitations are a horror filmmaker's best friend, whether it's confining characters to a haunted house, constructing a forest menace out of shaky "found footage," waiting until the third act to show the shark, or starving the senses in order to heighten them. A Quiet Place is about a wave of blind, deadly arachnid creatures that are sensitive to sound — imagine if the aliens in the Vin Diesel film Pitch Black were deposited on earth, more or less — but it's really about isolating an effect and custom-fitting a story around it. When a single utterance or unintended noise means quick and certain death, the audience will hang on every bump of the soundtrack, like a heart patient eyeing an EKG.
There are high-minded ways to interpret A Quiet Place, which develops into an affecting metaphor for the perils of parenthood, but it's effective primarily as a back-to-basics statement of genre fundamentals. We're so accustomed to being pummeled into submission by studio soundtracks that the deprivation here has a clarifying effect, reminding us of what's possible when sound and music is carefully placed. That the film comes from Platinum Dunes, the production company of Transformers director Michael Bay, feels like an act of penance from Hollywood's chief supplier of ear-splitting rackets.
The unlikely frightmaster responsible for A Quiet Place is John Krasinski, best known as Jim from The Office and less well-known for Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and The Hollars, his mediocre forays into independent filmmaking. Krasinski starred in Bay's thriller 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, and Bay has returned the favor by allowing him to merge the quiet, character-driven qualities of his indie films with the sledgehammer impact of a mainstream shocker. Krasinski lands on a loud-quiet-loud formula akin to '90s alternative rock: When the chorus kicks in, the jump-scares really pop.
By Day 89 of the invasion, an entire planet of loudmouths has seemingly been winnowed down to one family wandering through a Cormac McCarthy apocalypse. The Abbotts—Lee (Krasinski), Evelyn (Emily Blunt), and their three children — are first shown tiptoeing around a general store in bare feet, culling medications and other essentials they need for their journey. (Sorting through pills bottles, in this context, is like dangling your toes in piranha-infested waters.) After a deadly encounter, the film cuts to roughly a year later, when the family is holed up in a farmhouse and expecting a new addition.
Bringing a newborn into a world where noise can kill brings another dimension to the phrase "planned parenthood," and there will no doubt be arguments over the wisdom of Lee and Evelyn's decision, just as there are over victims running up the stairs in a slasher film. Rest assured, the Abbotts have thought it through completely, but even the best-laid plans can't account for, say, an errant nail on the basement stairs or an ill-timed plumbing issue. And once the creatures' attention is roused, they have a tendency to stick around until they find the source and tear it to shreds.
A Quiet Place operates like a more wide-open version of Don't Breathe, the superb Fede Álvarez thriller from two years ago about three robbers invading the home of a blind veteran. Krasinski doesn't have Álvarez's penchant for atmosphere and calculated aggression, but he comes close enough, and the performances make up much of the difference. Blunt is particularly good as an expectant mother turned reluctant warrior, but the entire cast works hard to humanize characters who could just as easily be waved around as flesh-colored arachnid bait.
Embedded in the film's story is a touching truth about how the parental instinct to protect children from the dangers of the world don't always square with reality. As much as Lee and Evelyn fret over the logistics of a new baby —common questions like "Bottle or formula?" or "Cloth diapers or disposable?" are not as pressing here — they also have to deal with two older kids who are pushing the boundaries and testing their independence. We may not recognize the monsters that lurk around every errant peep in A Quiet Place, but the world outside the theater has plenty of its own.
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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"A Quiet Place," out April 6, is John Krasinski's first horror film. Best known as Jim from "The Office," Krasinski's not a stranger to the director's chair, but this is his first picture that has critics making some noise. Here, Krasinski, Emily Blunt ("Sicario," they're married IRL), Noah Jupe ("Suburbicon") and Millicent Simmonds ("Wonderstruck") play a family that must stay silent to survive. Do Krasinki and the cast make the most of that hook, or is the movie quietly forgettable? Here's what the reviews say:
Shhhh — Everything In The Movie Hinges On Silence
The story — from a screenplay co-written by Bryan Woods, Scott Beck, and John Krasinski, who also directs and stars — is post-apocalyptic, set in the very near future, around 2020. We pick up 89 days into an event that seems to have wiped out most of Earth’s population.
[Vox]
One family — a father (Krasinski), mother (Blunt, who’s married to Krasinski off-screen) and their children; I don’t think we ever heard anyone’s name — remains, and we quickly learn that the family’s survival is due to their ability to live on their rural farm in silence. They speak in sign language and the faintest of whispers; they walk barefoot; they eat off lettuce leaves rather than clanking plates. Why? These monsters, we learn with a shiver, are triggered by sound.
[The Seattle Times]
Thankfully, The Sound Design Lives Up To The Premise
As you might expect in a movie that hinges on sound, the mix of silence with noises variously environmental, exposing, and terrifying, coupled with the occasional music-laced excitement (Marco Beltrami composed the score), is spot on.
[The Wrap]
For a movie with such sparse dialogue, “A Quiet Place” often gives way to annoying bursts of shrieking strings to jolt its audience, as if they can’t be trusted to find the disquieting mood sufficiently freaky. (It’s almost like producer Michael Bay kept turning up the volume, before Krasinski could bat his hand away). Thankfully, Marco Beltrami’s score largely sticks to a low rumble that hovers on the same wavelength as the characters’ unease.
[IndieWire]
A film that demands silence of its characters implicitly demands the same of the people watching it, and it’s strange, even admirable, how effective A Quiet Place can be when you realize that you’re holding your breath not only as a natural reaction to suspense, but in abidance of the rules of the movie. You’re not in danger, but you might find yourself inadvertently behaving as if you were.
[The Ringer]
The Kid Actors Are Particularly Impressive
A highlight of the otherwise forgettable Suburbicon, Jupe has a winning rapport with Krasinski that enhances this complicated father-son relationship at the end of the world.
[Paste]
Simmonds leverages her real-life experience as a deaf teenager to deliver a deeply convincing portrait of a girl who feels shut out of her own family, but it’s Jupe who is the most astonishing silent actor of the film, dishing up paralyzed, soundless terror in several different flavors.
[Vanity Fair]
At Points 'A Quiet Place' Can Be Obvious Or Cloying...
Even all these years after The Office left the air, there’s something permanently Jim-like about Krasinski—a well-meaning niceness that’s pleasant but also a bit cloying. What’s remarkable about A Quiet Place is how often he puts aside that quality, which infected his first two films, to honor his pitiless story. But ultimately, he can’t resist the urge to indulge in a little schmaltz.
[Paste]
A slow camera pan past the Abbotts’ many, many excruciating weeks of deep research and careful insight (from the whiteboard: “What are their weaknesses?” “SOUND”) makes it seem like the movie’s in on a joke very much worth telling about survival-as-genre. Ditto to a guffaw-worthy magical childbirth, and especially to the makeshift, soundproof crib devised for that occasion, which made me squeal at its inventive ridiculousness.
[The Ringer]
... But Most Of That Serves The Tension And Horror Well
The introduction of needing to be silent, the discovery of what the aliens look like, and the presentation of the ecosystem that has developed since their arrival is all fascinating, but the risk with such films is that, eventually, we’ll grow accustomed to the conceit and get restless. Krasinski and his writers sidestep the problem not just by keeping A Quiet Place short but by concocting enough variations on “Seriously, don’t make a noise” that we stay sucked into the storytelling.
[Paste]
Sure, it feels a bit contrived at times. (Most horror films do.) But as the dominoes start to fall, one by one, there’s a cathartic thrill to seeing how carefully they were arranged in the first place. Small elements that surfaced earlier in the film come back, like some kind of scavenger hunt, putting family members in danger and extracting them from it.
[Vox]
Turns out Evelyn is pregnant (the movie tastefully denies us what would have been the quietest sex scene ever), and ends up going into labor at a very inopportune time—a diabolical twist that allows Blunt to perform a superb pantomime of suppressed pain and fear, realizing a Scientologist’s insane ideal for childbirth.
[The A.V. Club]
It's Certainly Krasinski's Best Directing Work Yet
A Quiet Place is Krasinski’s third film as director, after his misguided adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (2009) and the generic family drama The Hollars (2016). Neither of those movies suggested that “Jim” from TV’s The Office was a filmmaker bursting with talent — breaking news: Not all actors were born to direct. That makes it a bit of a shock that A Quiet Place feels like the work of an old pro who has been newly inspired.
[Village Voice]
Whether you’re in it for the ride, or the story of loved ones under siege, it’s safe to say nobody could have expected Krasinski (after two unassuming features, including the dysfunctional-clan dramedy “The Hollars”) to have this in him as a director. Maybe for some filmmakers sincerely interested in human emotions, all they need to show their stuff is to add monsters.
[The Wrap]
The Movie's Familial Themes And Climactic Act May Or May Not Come Together For You
The success of the film hinges almost entirely on the way in which real-life couple and parents Blunt and Krasinski pour their fears about raising children into their performances here. As is the case with most successful, spare horror films of late, A Quiet Place has much more to say about its humans than its monsters and is especially invested in the ways families fail to communicate even their most basic needs to each other.
[Vanity Fair]
A Quiet Place seems to really want a cathartic victory for its characters, but can’t get one without undermining the larger premise. After all, this is supposed to be one family up against a force that’s destroyed civilization, and the film is better when the characters aren’t incredible, heroic exceptions.
[The Verge]
A Quiet Place is a classic example of a film that needed to be either better or worse to really be good. It needed either to embrace that it’s a dumb horror movie populated by dumb people making dumb choices and revel in that fact, as its premise is more than prepared to do, or to earn its self-seriousness with real complication and compassion, preferably something beyond poorly scripted dramatic arcs and the lonesome Americana of Krasinski’s beard. Rustic tones and well-choreographed images may obviate the former, but they don’t automatically add up to the latter.
[The Ringer]
TL;DR
A Quiet Place is unique high-concept science fiction that’s grounded solidly in human drama. Some horror movies imbue a seemingly harmless place or object with newfound danger. A Quiet Place may not make audiences afraid of wearing shoes or talking — but it might make those things feel luxurious, however momentarily.
[The Verge]
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