A Quiet Place is a science fiction horror about a man who just wants his wife and kids to shut the fuck up.
Directed by and starring John Krasinski – the tall one with a beard from the American version of The Office who mostly used to pull exasperated expressions at the camera whenever someone did something supposedly funny – the film follows his character who devises an elaborate plan to stop his family incessantly screeching.
Forcing them to live in a minging house in the middle of nowhere, like some sort of lotion-slavered kidnapper freak, Krasinski manages to convince his family that if they make any sort of noise a cheater on stilts will violently maul them to death. And although we do see these alien beings numerous times throughout the film, it is clear they are a figment of his family’s imagination, created purely out of fear, like the Bogeyman and Ann Widdecombe.
Krasinski ingeniously tells his family that the aliens have hypersensitive hearing, meaning that even the sound of a muffled cough will definitely result in them being splayed all over the grounds of their farmyard home, which has actually become their prison. Subsequently, the majority of A Quiet Place is completely silent, except for the occasional ant guff and rustling of clothing. Krasinski’s character achieves a blissfully serene environment where he is actually able to hear himself think, and all he needed to do was create a farfetched fib involving flesh-eating space insects.
Of course, there are some holes in the logic of his elaborate lie. For instance, when Krasinski takes his youngest to a noisy river and informs him that the aliens can’t hear small sounds over larger ones, it begs the question: ‘why not just live next to the river, then?’ And despite how easy it should be to lure the made-up creatures to any given location with a remotely activated noise, at no point in the film does anyone attempt to trap one of them. They could have blasted out some music on a massive speaker, waited for them to arrive and then played ‘Shape of You’ by Ed Sheeran, which would have killed them all instantly.
But that is my only real gripe with A Quiet Place, an otherwise inspiring film about a man who dares to dream of a life in which his loved ones shut the fuck up for just five minutes. I was particularly moved by a scene in which Krasinski’s wife (played by Krasinski’s wife) remained completely silent while giving birth, such was the strength of her belief in the imaginary extraterrestrial bastards invented by her husband.
As I sat there, furiously masturbating, I imagined what it would be like if I, too, could find a way to silence my loved ones, who insist on making noises with their mouths and listening to BBC Radio 1, as if it’s better than the sweet sound of nothingness. But, as usual, the only solution I could think of was holding their heads under water until life escapes them and the noise finally stops.