You may know John Krasinski as Jim, from The Office, or as Emily Blunt’s husband, however, Krasinski is not only and actor and husband, but also a director. And recently, he’s come back with a groundbreaking movie called A Quiet Place.
This is a horror movie, and initially, Krasinski was hesitant. “The first thing I realized was how ignorant I was […], because […] I realized I missed out on some of the best cinema that’s been going for the last few years,” he told BuzzFeed News. “Get Out, The Witch, The Babadook, Let the Right One In — all these movies are so incredibly well shot, well written, well thought out, that I’m such a lover of genre movies now.” However, when Krasinski saw how deep the movie goes beyond the frightening aspect, he signed on as an actor, writer and director for the film.
As of now, the reviews have been mostly positive, and the film even has a 97% score on Rotten Tomato’s TomatoMeter, and I can tell why. This film isn’t only scary, but it’s incredibly well thought out and presents a powerful allegory for a family struggling with guilt and grief.
The overall plot of the movie follows a family which lives in complete silence to survive the alien creatures that hunt by sound. John Krasinski stars as the father, Emily Blunt is the mother and their children are Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe. This film is incredibly suspenseful, and the fact that it is overwhelmingly quiet makes it almost unbearable. However, this film enhances the problems of lack of communication and parental anxiety as well.
When it comes down to it, both Krasinski and Blunt chose to be part of this movie because of the allegory about this family. Krasinski said, “It was terrifying and I could see that there was a potential for this giant allegory for parenthood, and that’s what I put into the rewrite of the script and I really tried to go for it”.
Emily Blunt said “It felt very close to home for me, as being a mother of two young children, feeling like I’m worried about exposing them to this brutal world, it’s a fragile world we’re in anyway, and wanting only happiness for my children, and their health and happiness and their safety, it’s like, this mother and the way she operates was so — it was a no-brainer for me.”
In the film, we can see just how far parents are willing to go to protect their kids from danger. Additionally, we get to see the struggle of their disabled daughter, played by Simmonds, who feels like a burden and has to deal with feelings of guilt and that she feels like she is not loved. One of the main aspects of the movie is how her troubled relationship with her father plays out, proving to be critical to the climax of the film. The fact that Simmonds herself is deaf also provides much need representation in film, particularly when her character’s deafness, seen by her in the movie as a burden, proves to be a critical, key element for the survival of the family.
At the end of the day, the familial structure is cohesive and feels completely realistic, which makes the audience relate to the character and the movie even scarier.
Buzzfeed News writer Louis Peitzman wrote “[w]ith […] combination of high-concept terror and potent emotional honesty, A Quiet Place emerges as exactly the kind of horror film Krasinski wanted to make — and one he was uniquely suited for. It’s also another great reminder of how a genre that has historically been dismissed and maligned can actually offer rich storytelling while still scaring the crap out of audiences.”
Overall, this movie is everything a horror movie, and a movie, in general, should be. I completely loved it and would definitely recommend it.
