So for those interested, I went and saw A Quiet Place on a whim tonight. I really hadn’t been planning on it, but my friends asked me to go, so I did.
The film has been discussed here so I’ll try to be brief with my impressions. [edit — so much for brevity 😔] In short, I really did like the movie. It was better than expected and I thought for the most part it was very well directed and the acting was more than adequate. The tension it creates and drama that unfolds is literally palpable in the theater. As advertised, I found it to be true that I’ve never been in a quieter theater (that was packed) like this before. I usually see big blockbuster action flicks when I go to the theater - with large explosions, sweeping exaggerated soundtracks with blasting orchestral music, and loads of quippy dialogue ... so to experience watching a movie in a theater that was quieter than a church, where you can’t even reach over to open your box of junior mints because it makes enough noise to be heard all the way to the opposite side of the room, well, and even your own breathing seems loud enough that you are consciously aware of it... yeah, that was something I’ve never experienced before and so I applaud the creativity.
Throughout the movie, I kept comparing it to The Last of Us. It’s not exactly like the video game’s story, but it seems slightly inspired by the setting of a post apocalyptic world over run by creatures, the most fearful of which use sound to locate prey. The way the protagonists scavenge through a nearly extinct civilization, collecting odds and ends for survival is very familiar to those who played the PlayStation classic. John Krasinski even looks like Joel, and takes the fatherly protective role quite well.
The other thing the movie seemed inspired by was another film, Signs. A show I quite liked and yet found A Quiet Place to actually surpass it in many ways. The enemy here is very well done.
Up through 75% of the movie, A Quiet Place’s mission to make you feel scared, anxious, and uncomfortable is done quite fantastically. Many times I would have the realization that my fists were clenched and my shoulders taut during the film and I had to consciously make myself relax. Then for some reason at the end, it fell a tiny bit flat for me. Just a bit. The build up and pay off ratio was not quite on par for me. I won’t go further due to spoilers, but I think I might be in the minority there about the ending and I expect most people to be quite satisfied, but I don’t know.
Not to mention, the plot has its share of holes and required suspension of disbelief, like any movie of this ilk. Some of the decisions the characters make don’t quite make sense, but in the context of the show, you just have to roll with it, and it doesn’t detract too much.
In summary the movie is really good. I enjoyed it about as much, if not more, than Ready Player One which I detailed my impressions of last week. I do believe A Quiet Place is probably most enjoyable in a packed theater, and will lose some of its special pizazz if you watch at home on the small screen, so if you’re at all interested, then I encourage you to go sometime in the next couple weeks while it’s still popular.
On a separate but related note, I also finally rewatched Thor Ragnarok on BluRay, although I had seen it in theaters several months ago. Man, I enjoyed it just as much the second time. The vast majority of the humor really hits, and I wish The Last Jedi had nailed some of its attempts at lightheartedness as solidly as Thor does. There was so many laugh out loud moments mixed with the over-the-top action and it’s just a fun time.
@Th3solution Good thoughts on A Quiet Place, especially since you also picked up on the Signs parallels. I'd also thought briefly about The Last of Us, knowing that the enemies in that game react to sound, but it really was a brief thought as I've never played it and therefore couldn't make any further comparison. Still, you've got to recognise that the enemy concept was likely directly inspired by it; the timings of film production fit perfectly. It was also very tightly edited and the pace was controlled with military precision; perhaps some of the character decisions and wider motivations were lost in keeping it so punchy? Depends which specific moments you were referring to, I guess.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@Th3solution Glad you enjoyed it and that the 'silent audience' effect is seemingly universal.
My partner went to see Ready Player One in the week with her dad (off work for half term). She said she'd enjoyed having not read the book, but was expecting a far more referential experience after a couple of conversations with me about the book.
We spoke about the film in detail and I was quite taken aback with the sheer amount of apparent changes and omissions. So much to the point that I really don't want to see it anymore.
The book is far from a masterpiece and I'm conscious of the nightmare of licensing everything in it. But there are a few core things that I really see no need to change or leave out.
I'll wait until it's streaming I think.
PSN: KALofKRYPTON (so you can see how often I don't play anything!)
Twitter: @KALofKRYPTON (at your own risk, I don't care if you're offended)
"Fate: Protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise." - Cmdr William T. Riker
@RogerRoger Yeah, The Last of Us similarities are loose enough that it’s possible that they are not intentional. In fact probably so. The idea of an enemy that can’t see and can only hear their prey is actually not all that unique I suppose, so my obsession with video games probably draws the comparison in my mind, but the opening scene scavenging the drug store just looked like it could have been taken straight out of the game.
As far as pacing, I agree with you. It really flows well. Except that the ending sequence after the baby is born and the kids are trapped at the silo started to drag on a little bit for me. It was like they pushed the tension just a little too far to make it bordering on ridiculous. I mean, not only do we have the poor lady giving birth, stepping on a nail barefoot, and then cleaning up and caring for a newborn by herself, all the while trying to stay silent, then the kids have to start drowning in quicksand-like grain while being hunted. The whole thing became a little overly dramatic by that point to as to make me disconnect a little. Then by the time the safe room starts to flood, I just had to think, “Geez, what more can they throw in here to go wrong for these poor people?”
As far as the potential holes and motivational decisions that I questioned — I didn’t quite understand why he forbade the daughter from going into the basement. He didn’t want her to see all the effort he was putting into making her hearing aids? Maybe I missed something but I just didn’t catch the motivation other than to create the pay off at the end when she discovers all he did and sacrificed for her and then how she finally figures out the weakness. Also, why did they not used the quiet safe room before the baby was born? For a year and a half, they prepared and only then did that get to test that idea? I guess it was possible it was too much of a gamble to try it out before the baby came, but still. And is walking barefoot really necessary? Would soft shoes really make that much more noise, considering you are running the risk of stepping on something sharp (which happens), getting an infection, etc.? Which I never really thought about, but maybe it would be quieter but I don’t know. Which leads to my final critique - the presence of ambient noise. Anyone who has spent any time in nature knows there is no true silence outdoors. Or even indoors, unless you are in a true anechoic chamber, as is used in professional recording. The world is full of noise. I appreciate that they touch on this with the river and waterfall, but even in the quietest of circumstances, there would be frequent sounds of nature to confuse the enemy.
But that’s all being excessively nit-picky about a really good and enjoyable film. Like I said before, any fictional setting will have small things you have to just kind of accept in order to enjoy and give the benefit of the doubt to the characters and the world.
@KALofKRYPTON It is true that RPO has plenty of harsh omission from the book. Whole segments of the quest are handled differently and the films and games present in the book do not make an appearance in the film, as you say, presumably due to licensing issues. Considering what they had to work with, they manage to make a fun movie out of it, albeit flawed.
Conversion of books to film is always dicey. The best book to film adaptations are probably the Harry Potter series. At least he first 3. They start to omit a lot in the 4th one. Also, I’m a huge fan of the original Lord of the Rings. (The Hobbit films were alright, but talk about deviating from the book! And then some!). I felt the essence of the LotR trilogy was captured in the films, but even then, there is a lot of extras shoe-horned in to make for better visual drama (I’m looking at you Arwen)
I watched Star Trek: Byond last night. I liked it, but was a bit dissaponted. It’s the weakest of the 3. It has a problem that’s seems to becoming more common these days. Movies are too fast paced. It never took the time to really develop characters or story much. Even leaving the shock or emotion gone because sometimes because it’s almost over by the time you’ve been able to process what’s happening. Example: When the villain sucks the life out of people for the first with the two crew members hung upside down, it’s really about over by the time you understand what he’s doing. No time was taken for the scene at all.
It just funnells from one scene to the next as fast as possible. It felt a little loose with the action sometimes too.
The villain is also a example of poor pacing. I was completely confused about him by the end. I mean, his motivations are very well explained, and it doesn’t make sense as to how he went from abandoned captain with 3 crew members to life sucking alien with a giant hive mind army while he complains about unity and tries to destroy federation to make it stronger. What even happened.
I liked some of the humor though.
Moves need to start having less scenes or being longer.
Funnily, games move away from and take times to develop more and more while being accused of not being art, while movies seem to be moving towards being more shallow and heralded as art.
@Feena Thanks. Yeah definitely report back. I’m curious what your take on it might be. And you can go back and read the spoiler tagged items I left and see if you agree.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Author named Dennis Wheatley. He wrote a small number of occult novels, as well as some war ones based on his national service.
The supernatural ones are excellent, if rather of their time (1930s); there are examples of language and attitudes that are to be expected.
The Devil Rides Out is essentially a story about a group of friends, one of whom falls in with Satanists and the ensuing plot of the Satanists and the efforts of the group to rescue their friend.
The film is by the Hammer House of Horror, made in '68. If you're not sure about who Hammer are - pretty much any British supernatural film you've seen with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and their contemporaries was probably made by Hammer. Often low budget, often of questionable quality - but absolutely endearing.
The adaptation of The Devil Rides Out is, barring one scene, note for note identical to the book.
I'd highly recommend reading Wheatley's supernatural books (The military ones are are rather dry). As far as horror goes, it's all rather twee feeling by modern standards - but he did so very much research.
He wrote a non-fiction book called The Satanist using his years of research and even time living as a Satanist for research.
It's all very bonkers, but incredible to think of what was going on in tiny English hamlets in the pre and post WW2 years.
@Kidfried
Let me know what you think.
Hammer really made some great films, but mileage may vary on how accepting you are of low budgets and questionable effects work.
Some of their best are:
The Gorgon
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Horror of Dracula
The Curse of Frankenstein
Curse of the Warewolf
Plague of Zombies
The Quatermass trilogy
Twins of Evil
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed
Dracula Prince of Darkness
There are a few Hammer films I haven't seen. But most made it to DVD. I occasionally pick one up if I'm passing CEX.
EDIT: I totally forgot to mention The Woman In Black!
Hammer made a return to production with The Woman In Black starring Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe. It's a really good film actually - and Radcliffe is surprisingly watchable given his Hey Presto past.
He's also great in Horns in case you haven't seen that.
@Th3solution Thanks for the in-depth response about A Quiet Place and I agree, I'm curious to see what @Feena thinks of the film, too!
I agree; when she woke up in the flooded room, I half-expected it to be a dream / nightmare sequence, because I didn't think it'd flood that quickly, nor did I think the script could be that cruel. All of the other questions you raise are totally valid; the best answer I can come up with (even somebody like me, who's used to defending poor writing) is that it helped the tension and created the final sequences, especially the "don't go into the basement" rule.
That's always a problem when writing fiction. If you have specific scenes you want to end up at, writing backwards to arrive at them can sometimes create fuzzy logic. I have a feeling that the final scene was either written first, or written pretty close to the beginning of the whole process. Also, trains of thought like "We've got to have a bit more tension... so she should step on a nail. How's she gonna step on the nail? Make them all walk without shoes. Okay, done... I mean, we'll have to introduce that element sooner, but that's okay, it'll make sense eventually!" can be commonplace. It doesn't matter that I spent most of the film wondering why they weren't all wearing tennis shoes, because I spent the key thirty seconds of nail-stepping action squirming in my seat.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
Saw A Quiet Place last night. I have my issues with it, but it's overall an incredible achievement in focused direction and effective use of sound to build an atmosphere of tension and paranoia. It's nice to see a deliberately artistic, and not mainstream-by-design at all sort of film achieve this kind of success. Seeing this in a theater is a must. My heart jumped in my throat every time a sound distinct enough from the quiet pitter-patter of feet exploded from the speakers, no matter how unnoticeable it would have been in other films. The acting was pretty great as well, and the Clicker-esque monsters were pretty scary. I'm glad the wisely decided to keep them mostly hidden until near the end of the film.
I'm pretty sure the idea didn't come from TLOU, though: it's not like Naughty Dog invented the concept of a monster that navigates by sound.
I really have to question the logic of a world that didn't IMMEDIATELY think to utilize some sort of sonic weapon against these creatures once they realized they navigated the world almost entirely by sound, though. Like... we already have these weapons. Nobody thought to use them? That was some bafflingly stupid writing.
Also, sanctity of life be damned: shame on those people for going through with a pregnancy in a world like that! Were they planning on keeping the baby in that little coffin every time it made a noise, as babies are wont to do? I'd call this more bad writing, but I'm pretty sure I know some people who would be exactly this stupid, so I'll give it a pass.
Pretty good movie otherwise, though. It's always nice when these horror movies come along every few years and seem to redeem the existence of a genre that is dominated by terrible direct-to-video releases.
@Th3solution Great thoughts! I shared a similar experience in terms of the deathly silent theater. The film's incredibly spare sound design makes it where you gain a heightened sense of EVERYTHING around you, and it makes you nervous to cough, adjust your seat, or reach for a bag of snacks. It really is a brilliant parallel to the way the characters in the film had to be incredibly mindful of the sounds they were making. If you think about it, it's an emergent, incredibly context-specific experience that relies on seeing that exact movie in a dark theater, surrounded by other people. Seeing it at home would be an almost entirely different experience. It's experiences like this, I think, that still justify the expense and inconvenience of having to go on a pilgrimage to the cinemas.
Saw "A quiet place" last night and I agree with all the comments that have been made here.
As you guys pointed out the theatre was incredibly still to the point were I couldn't physically take bite of the cookies I brought with me.
The premise is very ingenious and I liked the direction, though you could imagine the director being pretty green at times. It was a tense and ultimately satisfying creature film but I think the film could have done a lot more by showing us a lot less of our monsters. Nothing is as scary as our imagination running wild. I also thought it finished a bit too soon...I see what they did with the ending but it's somehow unsatisfying.
And yes as @Ralizah pointed out, the fact nobody thought of a sonic kind of weapon is rather strange.
@Feena My mother audibly yelled at the screen: "That's it?!" when the credits started rolling. I didn't mind the ending, but I actually tend to like abrupt endings when they end on an exclamation point like this film did.
The monsters, once we got a good look at them, reminded me of the creature from Cloverfield.
I watched Ready Player One. It was a great movie. It had so many awesome references and Easter eggs, and I know there were even more than I saw. I loved the art style they had for the Oasis, it was the perfect blend of realism and fantasy/cartoon. The story was pretty good and I quite liked the casting for the characters. Samantha is particular because I liked how she was pretty, but not freakin gorgeous.
I’ve never read the book nor know anything about it.
All in all I think it could only use a few improvements. It should have had more social commentary, as I really liked the stuff that was there from being in the real world too to the 80% ads without seizures. Also, it needed Nintendo and Sony characters in it, as I don’t think I saw any of them.
Also, Mechagodzilla Vs. Gundam was the best thing ever, I was so excited when that happened. It was the best scene in the movie probably. I’m tided over until King Kong Vs. Godzilla comes out.
Also, that permadeath mechanic would never fly in a real MMO. It worked well for the movie, but could never exist in reality. People like PvP too much.
Sorry to bring up this one again, but I finally got round to watching The Last Jedi. It passed a couple of hours on, but what a strange film. It felt like it had been made by about twelve different people, each with a different idea of what a Star Wars film should be. And it looked like it had been edited by a kid with ADHD. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy it as such, it was just so strange.
Also, I could have done without the milk bit. That was easily the most disturbing scene in any film I have watched recently, and I saw Bone Tomahawk the other day.
Good job, Parappa. You can go on to the next stage now.
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