Movie Review

Silence is deafening and terrifying in A Quiet Place

The element of silence, accompanied by menacing noises, has long played a crucial role in many horror movies. Fans can likely come up with multiple memories of characters trying to be quiet while navigating creaking floorboards or hearing creatures scuttling nearby.

Those fleeting moments are ratcheted up to an almost unbearable degree in A Quiet Place. Co-written, directed by, and starring John Krasinski, it’s set in a world where much of the human population has been decimated by creatures that hunt using only sound.

The film centers on one family — father Lee (Krasinski), mother Evelyn (Emily Blunt), sister Regan (Millicent Simmonds), and son Marcus (Noah Jupe) — who have devised many ways to avoid making unnecessary noises. They include lining pathways with sand, using soft materials when at all possible, and, most importantly, speaking almost entirely in sign language. That last part comes more easily for them as Regan (and Simmonds herself) is deaf.

Unlike other films that try to overly explain their stories, A Quiet Place drops the audience directly into the middle of an ongoing saga, giving only minor clues, such as newspaper headlines, to indicate how the family and the world at large got to be in their situation.

To say that the movie is “silent” would be inaccurate, as sound effects and music play a big part in it. But the film contains perhaps 10-15 spoken lines of dialogue, making it the quietest film to hit screens in quite some time. In fact, the audience at my screening had at least 15-20 deaf people in attendance, who by all indications enjoyed the film as much as the hearing members of the crowd.

All of this silence serves the movie extremely well. Not only are you afraid of anybody on the screen making a noise, but the lack of sound transfers over to the audience wanting to be as still and silent as possible. When characters are put into situations where screaming would be the norm, their inability to give in to that impulse somehow makes the scenes all the more terrifying.

Special note should be made of the design of creatures in the film. Krasinski and his designers seem to have taken the best parts of other scary beings and combined them into one completely horrifying beast. Krasinski isn’t shy about showing close-ups of its intimidating features like razor sharp teeth and claws, making it extremely memorable.

All four actors do well in the film, but it’s Blunt who makes the biggest impression. Her character is put through the wringer, and her ability to emote without sound in such a way that you understand everything going on in her mind is astounding. Simmonds is as good as she was in 2017’s Wonderstruck; here’s hoping she continues to lead the way for deaf actors. Krasinski still has trouble shaking his natural jovial persona, but he does a solid enough job. His skills in putting together the film as a whole cancel out any acting shortcomings.

A Quiet Place is a film that will satisfy horror fans, but its family drama also gives it a broader appeal. Either way, it’s a quietly chilling experience that you won’t soon forget.

Emily Blunt in A Quiet Place.

Emily Blunt in A Quiet Place

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Emily Blunt in A Quiet Place.

Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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