Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 25 (A Quiet Place)

Shh.

Did I hype up a Doctor Who episode for this one? Too bad, spooky movie time. I say that and all, but believe it or not A Quiet Place manages to carry some of the same themes and emotions as Heaven Sent did, and be a really proper tense horror film. I certainly wasn't expecting what I got when I fired the thing up, but I can't say what I got was bad in any respects. No, like Heaven Sent, this is a movie about loss and grief and hope in the face of total despair. The total despair this time is the end of the world, or as close to it as we can tell. I kept expecting to see an extended flashback to when the shit went down, but by about 20 minutes in it became clear that the movie wasn't interesting in telling that story. No, there's just spooky monsters which are ultra-sensitive to sound that have brought about worldwide devastation, according to some newspapers we can see. This isn't a movie about the end of the world, it's one about coping with a post-apocalypse. It's a survival movie, both survival of actually staying alive and the survival of the one family who's our focus. It's hard, of course. Their youngest son, ripped to shreds in the cold open so suddenly. Loss and grief and guilt permeate the proceedings, but there's also that tension. Very quickly we learn that these monsters are fuckin' vicious when it comes to sound, and something as simple as glass breaking will make the little bastards hustle to investigate and kill whatever in fuck made the noise. Peter Capaldi just had to outrun a monster every 82 minutes.. This poor family can't talk above a whisper or a speedy jackass with scythe arms will cut off their heads. This leads A Quiet Place to be... well, a very quiet and thoughtful little film about this family. When noise comes and shit happens, though, you feel it. Holy hell do you feel it. I hesitate to call its use of jumpscare loud noises in any context that actually scared the shit out of me, but they are the most effective at changing the tone.


Then there's the whole climax, of course. I'm gonna spoil the movie in this part, and since it's recent-ish I will plop down the spoiler warning. Bail out now if the idea of this movie appeals to you. Still here? Okay. So, the family's oldest child is a deaf girl, which is not only great for representation but also makes things a lot easier for communication; the family can just use sign language to talk in the quiet moments. This also makes the monsters her dark mirror: she can't hear, whereas they can super hear. Dear Dad was working on making her a new hearing aid out of stereo parts, but now he's dead and gone after sacrificing himself to save the kids. How will we get out of this one? Turns out the feedback from her non-working hearing aid, when amplified, really fucks up the monsters. I love this idea a lot. Going into it, I thought this would just be a grim affair with no real hope to it, just a family surviving. This gives us a sliver of hope, as they kill one of the monsters at the end... and with more coming, Mom raises the shotgun and pumps it. Fade to black. Fuck me. Sound, their greatest asset and their greatest weakness. You could poke at that and ask about the outside world, but we're not meant to know about any of that. Maybe people in big cities figured this shit out ages ago. It's not the concern of this movie's focus on one family out in the middle of nowhere. Either way, I really enjoyed this one! The tension was high, the premise pretty unique, and it had that crunchy emotional shit I adore. A real winner. Tomorrow will be Doctor Who. Promise.