A Quiet Place (2018)

So this movie was 🔥🔥🔥

Who the hell knew Jim from the Office was a master of suspense?

The premise is fairly generic but it’s a stunningly effective and focused popcorn monster movie of the type they don’t make anymore (think Tremors or all the good scary parts of Signs without Shyamalan’s bullshit). Within the first five minutes you know it’s not messing around. Amazing sound design. See it in a crowded theater if possible!

NY Times found it effective but shallow.

The gimmick is great but executed with just enough ambition to be disappointing at how good it could have been.

What one of the early trailers did really well was allow the gimmick to shine through without laying on too much music, but in the movie they decided to sabotage that, rather cynically deciding audiences won’t know to be scared without a blaring music cue at every turn.

I haven't seen it but the idea of this movie being completely silent except for the ambience of wind blowing, trees creaking, muffled footsteps, faint whispering etc. would be incredible. Encouraging the audience to listen closely for signs of the stalking monsters the same way they might listen closely when they "thought they heard something in the kitchen" late at night.

Too bad you're saying that's not the case here.

I would say it mostly is the case! There’s barely any music or spoken dialog above a whisper for most of the running time. Some of the scares are a bit obvious and loud I guess, but for me that’s part of the fun. YMMV!

If you’re looking for an even quieter, more disturbing version of this movie I would recommend It Comes At Night.

Ravenous is on netflix now. French-Canadian quiet zombie movie. quiet is the new horror.

i loved that Malickian zombie movie on Netflix. can't remember the name of it. the first 45 minutes is just a woman wordlessly foraging in the woods with nary a zombie to be found.

and New Quiet movement favorite Hush is on Netflix too. the Wait Until Dark of its generation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdSsXiEIDSA

This film dodged one bullet at least

https://io9.gizmodo.com/a-quiet-place-could-have-been-a-cloverfield-movie-1825070938

Here Alone! that's the pastoral zombie movie. i like that one.

I've been railing for years against the overuse of score to telegraph scares in horror movies. I'm glad to see that Hollywood has finally started listening to me.

In its use of silence and natural noises then it reminds me of last year's solid non-hit A Ghost Story.

this movie is basically farce without the comedy. no surprise at all to see michael bay’s name come up like six times at the end.

In their enforced silence, these characters are a metaphorical silent—white—majority, one that doesn’t dare to speak freely for fear of being heard by the super-sensitive ears of the dark others. It’s significant that when characters—two white men—commit suicide-by-noisemaking, they do so by howling as if with rage, rather than by screeching or singing or shouting words of love to their families. (Those death bellows are the wordless equivalent of “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”)

If that's the case, Jim from the Office is the perfect protagonist imo

just saw this and it is fantastically bad in almost every respect except photography and acting.

perhaps not since CRASH has such a terrible film been received so well

About to see this with my daughter. Don't see how it could make anyone Crash-mad unless everyone in the movie is very stupid and, I dunno, saved by god at the end. Will report back in a couple of hours.

Will vouch for It Comes at Night and Hush as solid and/or bleak, though The Survivalist is a better version of the former's scenario, imo.

for a movie that seems to be being praised for eschewing many tired horror/thriller tropes, it employs, like, every one. but that's only the beginning of the argument against this.

SPOILERS

the point at which it completely lost me was when she was about to give birth (alone, because of course everyone would go off and do random things alone in this universe, that makes perfect sense and is perfectly logical) and she stumbled down the stairs and pierced her foot on a spike that was shown to the audience just moments earlier with great big flashing jazz lights saying "PAY ATTENTION TO THIS SPIKE IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT AND WILL FACTOR INTO THE PLOT VERY SOON". she could have just let out a scream because she's having a baby and it's fucking painful, but no, there needed to be a comedy foot piercing as well, because contrivance upon contrivance is how farce builds to a climax, and because the filmmakers don't trust their audience

Would it have won you back if everyone else also got their foot impaled on that nail despite frantic gesticulated warnings by an increasing pile of spike victims, till finally the cloverfield monster also gets spiked and that's how it dies, and the final shot of the movie is Jim taking a sharpie and answering his own big-lettered question, "WHAT IS ITS WEAKNESS?" with "TETANUS"?

yes that would do it

That is exactly what I was hoping for! That one after the other everyone steps on that nail until the monster does and then it dies of tetanus.

Anyway, there was some point this movie lost me, too, though I don't know if it was terrible. It's definitely annoying, though, the film equivalent of someone repeatedly sneaking up behind you and yelling in your ear.

Remember when, toward the end, when one of the kids reaches through the cornstalks to grab the other kid's ankle, because that is the best way to get someone's attention without startling them which might cause them to shriek and then get eaten by a monster which looks like Alien and sounds like Predator because why make a new one, anyway, the sound which should have accompanied that act, instead of the sound the filmmakers choose, which was something akin to a rubber mallet striking a wooden bench, should have been like gong or maybe a kittens meow, that would have been funny

My daughter pointed out how much it owed to Stranger Things, from the monster (already a riff on Aliens) to the lights (which were still clever here, along with the sand to silence paths, which almost made up for the white board with big red lettered "CREATURE! SOUND! NEED MEDICINE! WHAT IS ITS WEAKNESS!?!?" notes).

There were a couple almost metaphors swirling around in this wholly unsatisfying thing, though, including the idea of a deaf person essentially terrorized by even the prospect of sound, or, more broadly, the horrors of having children. I told my daughter it's like a dystopian parenthood movie, where you can finally convince your kids to shut up and be quiet because otherwise a monster will eat them. And then while they cower in terror you have a beer and read a book in peace.

You could practically smell the test audience religious bait, too. This is a family that stays together, prays together, and goddammit, has its baby, hardships be damned!

I'm sorry but why do they get pregnant under these circumstances? An I missing something? I can see replacing the youngest, but not in postapocalyptic monster world

cornstalks

intriguing that one of those monsters cold rustle loudly through the fields of corn and not attract other monsters

anyway

I liked this as a short lil genre exercise

but also like didn't anyone ever think about using abrasive high pitched sound before?? like of course something with super sensitive hearing is gonna have that be its weakness, that's comic book 101 type stuff

Also that a hearing aid could take down a giant ear monster.

the period between when the girl realized the hearing aid hurt the monster, and when she put it up to the mic, why did she continue to wear it if it hurt her?

and the way to kill the monsters is to thrust that hearing aid into a microphone rigged up to giant speakers, the existence of which in a world of COMPLETE MANDATORY SILENCE is the single fucking dumbest contrivance they could have come up with

she turned it off tbf. if she's thrown it away it would have been a horrible insult to her dad, who she deep down knows doesn't really hate her

who she deep down knows doesn't really hate her

don't even start me on that stupid fucking scene

giant speakers? small radio speakers in the sound-muffled basement iirc

but why are they there

Cmon all the nail was v obviously a Chekhov's Gun

yeah I loved the nail, and the combo of already-not-screaming-from-labour plus only-the-audience-know-about-the-nail.

movie that seems to be being praised for eschewing many tired horror/thriller tropes

anyone doing this is an idiot. I went in expecting some jump scares & a gimmick, movie delivered.

getting pregnant was the one looks-like-dumbshit activity that doesn't get explained later, and obv it is VERY dumbshit. let's assume he's been diligently c'ing on t's since the first kid got chomped, but she got preggers off pre-come.

thrust that hearing aid into a microphone rigged up to giant speakers

again iirc but it is not rigged to giant or indeed any speakers, she just creates high-frequency feedback in the hearing aid

and yet she continues to wear the hearing aid unnecessarily despite the pain it causes her, that was odd. She could have carried it in her pocket

again iirc but it is not rigged to giant or indeed any speakers, she just creates high-frequency feedback in the hearing aid

why is it there though

a microphone hooked up to tiny speakers in the same room, why

if anyone else is trying to find people alive via radio, he would need a microphone to respond to them

it's there to talk into

In The Survivalist, which is pretty hardcore, someone gets pregnant but no way do they carry it to term.

Honest question: where did all the basement water come from? I might have looked at my watch for a second, but I totally missed it. Hundreds of gallons of running water from ... where? The sink? Broken tank?

if anyone else is trying to find people alive via radio, he would need a microphone to respond to them

in the same room

...how else do you think it can work?

If you're talking to someone on the phone, do you have the microphone in one room, and the speaker in another, and you go from one room to the other depending on whether you are listening or speaking, but the two parts are also not connected to each other

yeah I was confused by the water s well, it seemed to be a broken pipe, but then to have taken no trouble at all to clear up. as though they had set it up as another defence mechanism, inspired by the waterfall.

...how else do you think it can work?

but why is there a microphone and speakers in a world in which a microphone and speakers will kill you

with this movie, why ask why, seriously

I have an irrational celebrity hatred of J Kras and this film just confirmed every possible suspicion of his psychic and intellectual constitution

sleeping in a tent >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> living in a house where monsters will kill you for making a sound

yeah but! their driving force is to find other surviving groups of humans and either build or rejoin a society. this is the motivation for p much all their non-immediate-survival actions. if the film was about ppl who wanted to live in a tent by themselves, it would be about different characters.

I'm not endorsing these probable nutbag evangelist-like Christians who insist on procreating, but they're the protagonists of the film as released, and they don't want inbred grandbabies.

look i’m happy to accept that all the characters in this movie just happen to be a bit dim xp

I was unhappy to accept that John Krasinski wasn't nude.

just watched this last night. much of it was enjoyable but some was so silly i couldn't help but laugh. the whole "let's have a baby when the thing that kills us is noise" was full of hubris. a better film i think would've killed them all for it - i thought for sure the baby would end up suffocating in that terrible baby box before i realized it wasn't that kind of movie. it was a family film about the love of parents for their children masquerading as a horror flick. the older daughter should've died in the corn silo, the baby in the baby box, and the son and father should've died before credits. a better movie would've ended with just the mother left alive and the audience realizing that her time was running out soon. or a scarier movie at least.

while watching we kept coming up with things that could kill you in this world. like if you snore too loud one night. or fart too loud. i guess if you have ibs you're dead pretty quickly.

I prefer your ending

This movie didnt really work at all tbh

the kid on the trail should totally have farted instead of pressed the button on the toy

dramatic, slo-mo John & Emily wheel-around

I have this weird feeling that Krasinki's only contribution to the script was his character's death scene

dunno why

I desperately want a fart-laden (and thus greatly improved) redubbed version of this movie basically now.

"Silent but Deadly"

would watch a version of this film with nude John Krasinski

i'd only be interested in watching this movie if it was nude john krasinski farting the whole time

Nude with life-saving butt plug

all butt plugs are lifesavers tbf

Watched this yesterday. Love reading through these threads after the fact.

Remember when, toward the end, when one of the kids reaches through the cornstalks to grab the other kid's ankle, because that is the best way to get someone's attention without startling them which might cause them to shriek

Gonna venture a guess that that character has never shrieked in her life and is in fact entirely nonverbal. Clearly she speaks both English and ASL, but doesn't vocalize her English at all, just aspirates.

And all the convo upstream about speakers and microphones, good lord. THERE WERE NO SPEAKERS. There was a microphone and a pair of headphones. Krasinski was using them to search for responses to tapped out S.O.S. signals on all frequencies, using the minimum amount of noise he could. Just before she shoves the hearing aid into the mic, the girl cranks the headphones to their maximum volume.

and yet she continues to wear the hearing aid unnecessarily despite the pain it causes her, that was odd. She could have carried it in her pocket

It only causes her pain when one of the creatures is nearby, because they clearly give off some kind of EM signal/interference that causes a feedback loop. This is indicated by the lights also flickering any time the creatures are near. This is the movie trying to explain things to you. The rest of the time it does nothing at all, as indicated by her turning it on, snapping her fingers, and hearing nothing. Presumably she just leaves it on because, who knows, maybe it will work? Also presumably she figures it's just a glitch the first two times it causes her pain, and by the third time says "Fuck this nonsense." Only when she's cornered and watching the thing react to all the electronics downstairs -- and notice, once again, all the screens go from what they were originally displaying to white noise, because the things emit and react to EM interference -- does she realize what must have happened before.

Early on, the deaf girl stares into the basement, turns on the light, then is about to take a few tentative steps down when Jim stops her and gets mad. "Don't go down there!" he signs, iirc. And she's all "why not?" And he's all "just don't." And I'm all "why not?" Is that where he keeps his radio? Is he just worried she'll start scanning for reception or something? Or does he know the radio, which makes noise, is dangerous? That and the flood, I totally missed something.

Both because she's incapable of knowing if she's causing any noise down there, and because the electronics might interfere with her cochlear implant.

None of the characters in this movie would have survived more than a week under these particular dystopic conditions, let's just all be really real for a moment.

I don't think those giant ear monsters are real either

I don't mind movies being criticized for things that are criticisable, I mind criticisms of things that are explained within the movie's internal logic! My big thing is that the time period encompassed by the onscreen titles, from Day 89 to Day 472 or whatever, must necessarily have encompassed an upstate New York winter. How did they keep from making noise walking in the snow? How and when did they plant all that corn in perfect rows? How and when did they fill the silo? Those don't make any sense at all according to the film's logic.

Oh! And:

Don't power stations / waterworks / fucking *printing presses* make noise?

They have solar panels on the house in a couple of shots, although powering that amount of electronics seems ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

One of the newspapers in the basement, the New York Post with the headline "It's Sound!," is the same paper still on the rack in town at the beginning of the movie on Day 89, so presumably the printing presses didn't run for very long.

Every time this movie comes up, I forget the title because it's so forgettable, and the substitute title which pops into my head is Be Vewwy, Vewwy Quiet! Which I think is a much better title.

There should be a sequel "A Pleasant-Smelling Place" where the monsters are triggered by the odor of methane gas

Get ready for a sequel.

“IT’S SOUND!” is my favourite thing in this film, I bet the post got a lot of letters going “oh you mean the ear monsters (that are made of ears) can hear sound? Ya fuckin think so?”

it seemed too obvious maybe

i'd only be interested in watching this movie if it was nude john krasinski farting the whole time

― macropuente (map), Friday, 26 October 2018 02:36 (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nude with life-saving butt plug

― the dutiful and the banned (rip van wanko), Friday, 26 October 2018 02:39 (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

all butt plugs are lifesavers tbf

― macropuente (map), Friday, 26 October 2018 02:39 (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In 1931, the Life Savers "Cough Drop" was introduced with menthol but it was not successful.

The nude-farting-Krasinski writer's room upthread was great.

Just saw this btw.

“IT’S SOUND!” is my favourite thing in this film, I bet the post got a lot of letters going “oh you mean the ear monsters (that are made of ears) can hear sound? Ya fuckin think so?”

― coetzee.cx (wins), Monday, October 29, 2018 2:44 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think the implied series of events here are that these creatures are suddenly attacking a world that is noisy by default, so it's not that crazy to assume that the press is hoping to broadcast exactly the way in which these monsters are hunting. The early days of this universe would be these things just running around everywhere and their tracking method would not be as obvious in that chaos, given how quickly they respond.

"Yeah, this'll work" attitude towards fast approaching birth took me out of the story the most, not that they seemed super confident, but echoing some similar thoughts upthread perhaps maybe they could have voicedwhispered more concern instead of say slow dancing (or during!) just so the audience doesn't feel quite so much like "how are they not addressing that this is impossible? A crying newborn?"

Otherwise some of the misconceptions upthread make me feel good about myself, like I'm some kind of master detail absorber and never realized it. Game of Thrones threads make me feel that way too.

they were planning to give birth by the waterfall, right? i mean, they didn't have a great contingency plan...

WHY DIDN'T THEY LIVE NEXT TO THE WATERFALL

the damp kept messing up the giant speakers

WHY DIDN'T THEY LIVE NEXT TO THE WATERFALL

A White Noisy Place (2018)

those poor children, the only thing they were allowed to play on the piano was John Cage's "4'33"

This was dumb as shit, wtf everybody

jim's pullout game must've been very weak

tbf, emily blunt, etc etc

This was dumb as shit, wtf everybody

shakey otm.

so we have to believe that this things have defeated every army across the globe but they end up vulnerable to a single shotgun blast. why didn't the family live in the basement? or attempt to soundproof their house in any way or even close the fucking doors? or have some remotely operated noisemakers set up around the farm? i nearly screamed when they put the baby in the box - and then they sit there calmly chatting and not freaking out that they've had to put their baby in a fucking sealed box. and then the leak - it looked like at least 10,000 litres of water down there, that must have been one giant pipe that got broken.

i've seen both of these and didn't love either. didn't hate them either. the premise doesn't hold up to scrutiny but that isn't what doesn't make the film work, cos lots of horror doesn't. it's just that in terms of apocalyptic horror, it does one thing over and over again, and doesn't do it particularly well.

and the indicating kills me. do we need an overdramatic finger over the mouth every time someone is telling someone else to be quiet?

things that would get you killed, in my estimation:

1) farting/pooping
2) coughing
3) sneezing
4) peeing
5) snoring
6) talking in sleep
7) literally any squirrel playing outside your house
8) sex
9) pushing someone in a wheelchair

The hand mouth finger move, though overused, the more I think about it the more I think it is VERY necessary

yes I am trying really hard to be quoted out of context

And to your point about the squirrels, they had a jump scare in the second film with a bunch of birds that fly away suddenly. Now birds flying away wouldn't be as loud as they are in a movie that is trying to use that moment to scare you, but yeah that should have still been enough to summon a decibelgorgon.

The thing that bothers me the most is when there is a noise trap or an accident that creates noise- the characters go "jig's up!" and run. I have no idea why they run. Shouldn't they just move away from the noise object immediately and then stand still? The thing is going to come smack the source of the noise (why do they seem to just smack things that make noise? Are they hunting or just pissed off?) and then it will simply move along, right? The noise of running tips them off pretty good. I couldn't tell if they were supposed to have any other way of detecting people, but maybe that was made obvious at some point. I forget. But maybe that's why it's not worth staying quiet anymore?

heh i was wondering about that too.

esp since these things seem to be light-speed fast once alerted

Second film felt very much like episodes 4 and 5 of the third series of some interminable Walking Dead type show.

Yikes wouldn't go that far, but they did abandon the fun nobody-talks element so it did seem way more generic in that sense. Will say it did feel way more akin to modern survival console story games like Last Of Us 2 etc. Maybe that sounds even worse, but Walking Dead is a pretty dismal comparison these days.

Tbf, I did say third series not eleventh series

I read this thread for a little while before I realized it wasn't about the Emily Dickinson biography by Terence Davies.

Why is 90% of horror just dumb garbage?

Um, Theodore Sturgeon to thread?