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A Quiet Place - Barney's Incorrect Five Second Reviews
- Black Barney
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Super effective thriller, with real emotion, real impact. No underlying message about religion or anything like that. just a family trying to survive.
It's going to be a very familiar environment to anyone that consumes modern media. There will be wisps of living in the world of The Walking Dead and such. I'm sure at more than one point, you will be reminded of Signs with Mel Gibson, but mostly you'll be wondering why they cast that girl as the daughter when she looks nothing like either parent.
One thing I'm very thankful for is that we've figured out how to really tap into John Krasinski's talent. Give him a role where he doesn't say anything above a whisper-level. He is very convincing as a desperate father trying to keep his family alive. It's the first time I've ever seen him successfully 'act' and look forward to seeing more. His voice is just so familiar that it'll be tough for him in other roles but in this, he's perfect.
You'll find yourself frustrated by the clumsiness of children, like any good thriller or horror movie. But mostly you're just AFRAID. You're so, so afraid. You'll find yourself shushing the characters in the movie, it's fantastic.
As an aside, I am going to stop showing up for the pre-show in the movie theatres. 15 minutes before the movie, they are showing a feature on this very movie, including one early pivotal scene that totally ruined the moment for me in the movie. What a terrible idea to show this before a movie.
Apparently the movie has a strong emotional element as well, as there were at least two people near me crying and whimpering at one point. It didn't have this effect on me (I'm always the one crying usually), but colour me impressed that a thriller can hit some people right in the chest like that.
Also, this is directed and co-written by Krasinski?? What's with comedians coming up with amazing thrillers these days? I love it. Want to see more of this for a genre that gets very little love.
Very strongly recommended. it's excellent.
Heart rating: 5 stars (it hits on ALL levels at once. Brilliant)
Brain rating: 4 stars (there's a few gaps for me in the plot. I would think a deaf person would never survive since they have terrible awareness of their sound level. I would think you wouldn't want to get pregnant since having a baby would be like spraying anthrax on your entire family. I would think that kids need constant supervision.). It's still pretty smart though.
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Because they wanted a deaf actress and then your pool is much more limited.you'll be wondering why they cast that girl as the daughter when she looks nothing like either parent.
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- Black Barney
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I still think a deaf person doesn't last three seconds in this world though. They're not even aware of their own subconscious breathing. One mistimed exhale and it's all over.
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My problem with it is my inability to turn off my brain. (spoilers follow, but I'll try to be broad)
They did a fantastic job of setting up things that paid off later. Nearly every scene in the movie has a purpose in that regard. They walk around barefoot. They put paint on floorboards and stairs to indicate where they can safely step without making noise. Uh oh, there's a nail sticking up in the painted section of the stair.... You absolutely know what is going to happen, and that contributes marvelously to the tension. It makes the audience feel smart and involved.
So why, then, do they bother with the scene where Father lights a fire and quietly acknowledges all the other fires lit in response? Who are these people? Why don't we ever see them? Hell, why don't they have a community, especially with a birth on the horizon? It would have been a different movie, but I would have loved to have seen a whole village of silent people trying to work together. Something like Shyamalan's The Village, maybe. Maybe once a week all the men meet down at the river to harvest fish and give updates and tips. Instead, we get yet another lone family trying to survive. I kinda preferred It Comes at Night for that story.
And then there's the creatures. Nigh indestructible with supreme hearing. Very cool. But apparently there's always one within about 50 yards no matter where you go? They've decimated the whole country (world?) without anyone figuring out a way to stop them? What is their prey, exactly? Are they eating everything that makes a sound? Wouldn't that exhaust their food supply pretty quickly?
This kind of thinking can ruin just about any horror movie, I realize. But this particular one wants to trade in logic and reason as part of the plot, yet so many things are preposterous. It creates a cognitive dissonance that didn't sit will with me.
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- Black Barney
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Yeah, the creatures are weird, but I LOVE that there is ZERO backstory. It's still hard to imagine that nothing worked on them (
I guess there's a very Cloverfield thing to them in that we don't know where they came from, but they're here and we gotta deal with this new reality.
These types of things didn't bother me more than that though. I usually don't dwell on holes in the world-building as much as holes in the decisions characters make (which obviously is BRUTAL at times in horror movies). Two examples:
I still think it's a brilliant movie and excels at what it aims to do. But it's also my new GO-TO example when I explain the difference between a heart rating and a brain rating.
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But yeah. More than a YEAR out there and you haven't put up more sound baffling throughout the entire house? You have electricity and lights and a friggin' transmitter powerful enough to reach JAPAN, and you don't think to set up sirens or other noise makers far enough away from your house that you could just flip a switch to pull them all away? This movie is just dumb. And I really don't mind that it's dumb-- but it bothers me that people seem to be going apeshit about how great it is.
A lot of this could also be solved if they restricted it to just one small town. Maybe like that Twilight Zone with Billy Mumy, "It's a Good Life." This one little town is cut off from the world because these monsters invaded. They can't get help, can't get resources, they're just stuck there. Then pretty much all of it makes (a little) sense again.
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- Black Barney
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This movie would have been terrible at a macro level. You gotta keep things really about individual survival amongst imperfect people.
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Damn, I had forgotten about the dumb fireworks. That just compounds the stupidity of the fire beacon scene. Surely everyone around them saw the fireworks. There should have been ten other families coming to their silent rescue.Black Barney wrote: yeah fireworks instead of a siren... makes for great filmmaking but probably way less effective. You know... having to light the fuse and everything.
This movie would have been terrible at a macro level. You gotta keep things really about individual survival amongst imperfect people.
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- Black Barney
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Anyway, it's a heck of a scary movie. It's not like it was dumb like LIFE or anything. It was still really effective. It's just not a movie you want to think about too much later. I really need to see IT FOLLOWS because I hear that's a movie you think about a lot after, trying to 'solve' the monster.
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As far as the fire beacon. Notice at the end that the kids tried to get the beacons lit, and not a one was lit in response. The kids even ran out of lighter fluid keeping it up. I'm guessing something happened and all those families died, which makes sense that no one helped out.
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I really enjoyed it. I didn't expect it to blow my mind like Annihilation, and it came through as a really solid thriller/horror movie set in an interesting world. I loved the world building and the commitment to detail. I loved the ending, especially the conclusion of the truck scene (got a little choked up).
The only things that bothered me were the previously discussed baby thing - why would you ever be that irresponsible? You put your entire family at risk.
Also, I loved the opening sequence because it set up expectations properly and was necessary to convey the brutality of what existence was left. But I don't buy that you would leave the kid out of sight and in the rear. I can't believe they trusted him to leave the batteries as well. That was crazy and makes me question whether the writers had spent any time with a young child.
Overall though, this was a horror movie with a ton of heart. It didn't waste time on character development but rather wove it into the ongoing story very well. We cared about everyone but felt they could die at any time. That's a pretty big achievement in this type of film.
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1. The dad lit the beacons at a specific time, dusk, whereas the kids lit theirs well after dark. I assumed they were signalling to their dad, not to their neighbours. I took it to be a small piece of world building to signal that other families were still alive and nothing more.
2. Even if you saw the beacons/fireworks I wouldn't necessarily expect anyone to come running (in total silence!) particularly not in the time frame covered by the movie. I don't think the neighbours were killed, I assumed that they were at best on their way (even still, I would imagine several interpreted a signal like that to mean "we're dead, don't send help").
Having said all of that, several people mentioned the heart that the movie and I think that's the key takeaway from this movie. I don't think it was supposed to hold up to intellectual scrutiny as the theme was about family and how they took care of each other. The director mentioned that this movie was a love letter to his kids and I think that's what came across [1].
[1] torontosun.com/entertainment/movies/what...spired-by-parenthood
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I really enjoyed the movie, I had seen criticism about too much jump scares and what not but I think the pace was really good, the acting was solid (kids hugging when they found each other hit me like a truck), and just the overall mood that the film brought was awesome.
The scene on the waterfall was great and I wanted to see more of it, a movie that was not all grey and dark about real people trying to cope, it really stroked a balance of fear, joy and fight.
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charlest wrote: Also, I loved the opening sequence because it set up expectations properly and was necessary to convey the brutality of what existence was left. But I don't buy that you would leave the kid out of sight and in the rear. I can't believe they trusted him to leave the batteries as well. That was crazy and makes me question whether the writers had spent any time with a young child.
I fully expected to hate the movie after that bit, but I think they were setting up that people make careless and fatal mistakes even in this world. But, I did say to myself, "If this is going to be one of those movies where the main characters make stupid decision after stupid decision..... " But, I thought it was important that their mistake kind of put a dark cloud over the rest of the movie.
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