[C+ Film Review] A Quiet Place: Hello Darkness My New Friend

Jayne 2021-12-07 08:01:07

Most of the time, the audience of horror movies are passive participants in the story: the audience is in an absolutely safe perspective of God, and what they enjoy is that the characters on the screen are wandering on the edge of crisis, and the psychology triggered by empathy and visual stimulation. /Physical pleasure. This raises an interesting and strange question: Should horror movies scare the audience or the characters? A little bit of attention will reveal that there are a large number of horror scenes just to frighten the audience, but they do not have a considerable impact on the people in the play. Most horror films require the audience to actively map their emotions to the fate of the characters in order to increase the level of participation and interaction. Under this premise, only Jump Scare, a simple, direct and effective method, was used uncontrollably.

This makes "A Quiet Place" seem extraordinary. As the directorial debut of John Krasinski, the entire film has both experimental and commercial content in terms of design and conception. This is the same as last year's "Escape from Destiny" and even the more mainstream "Clown's Back".

It’s not uncommon to hear monster designs that can be heard, and it can even be regarded as a bad street, but whether the entire movie can be supported by only one idea is a very test of execution. 2016's "After Turning Off the Lights" is a typical negative example. The beginning is very strong, but it cannot create a continuous horror atmosphere around the central point in the middle, and the ending is naturally unsatisfactory.

But John Krasinski cleverly preserved the audience's sense of participation until the last ten minutes. With the help of very restrained sound effects, the audience unconsciously becomes an active participant in "A Quiet Place", not just a passive observer. As a result, "A Quiet Place" has become a thrilling movie that can make the audience's heart beat faster and meet expectations without treating them as fools.

In other words, this is a very good horror movie.

The script of "A Quiet Place" was co-written by Brian Woods and Scott Baker. The work "Nightlight" released by the two earlier in 2015 is a typical low-cost horror film, with occasional highlights but the overall cliché, and the response was dull. . The director John Krasinski keenly captured and magnified one of the core elements of "A Quiet Place": family and growth, thus changing the tone of the whole movie: no longer selling horror elements to scare the audience, and It is to use empathy to guide the audience and establish connections.

From "Alien" to "Jurassic Park", keen, bloodthirsty alien creatures have always been an important part of horror movies. John Krasinski naturally knows this tradition, and is very clever to lead the audience into this auditory game. Like many horror movies, "A Quiet Place" contains the content of "inducing anticipation": through sight and sound, the audience’s common sense is used to induce the audience to have psychological expectations about the consequences of a specific behavior-when you see the alarm clock, you know it will ring. , When you see a nail, you know that you will step on it, and when you see a parturient, you know whether it will be silent. But John Krasinski did not overuse (highly refined to maximize its function), and at the same time successfully aroused the curiosity of the audience to participate in the process of cracking these established rules-after removing the useless pen , Which constitutes an important element of an excellent thriller movie. When the directors and screenwriters deliberately avoided dialogue as the main narrative method, this produced a very subtle change in the entire film, allowing the audience to integrate into an unexpected and incredibly pleasant way. The world on the screen.

When the sound is abandoned, the importance of vision becomes more prominent. The technical team led by John Krasinski and photographer Charlotte Christensen carefully set up each shot of "A Quiet Place" so that the movie is like a timer on a time bomb, perfectly balanced In addition, the sense of fear and natural scenery—these beautiful scenes also laid the emotional space for the characters. From the pictures we can also find that although it is a horror film, the essence of the film is not "destruction", this is a powerful core message. "A Quiet Place" is a movie about how to find power, not refuge. This idea really enhances the emotional power of the ending at the end of the film.

In addition to the weird ending that is likely to ruin your perception of the entire movie (which suggests a bad sequel development direction), "A Quiet Place" is another surprising work in the wave of excellent horror films that has gradually recovered in recent years. We live in an extremely noisy world, and it is hard to imagine what life is like without sound. So many classic horror movies are about people who have to adapt to harsh environments-they must challenge their own insecurities and preconceived common sense concepts to get a chance.

With this in mind, the performance of the actors is crucial. Real couples, Emily Blunt and John Krasinski are the reassurances of the movie. The former is the embodiment of motherhood and strength, while the latter is a typical strong and gentle father image. But the one who is truly outstanding is the deaf actress Millison Simmons, who plays the eldest daughter. In "A Quiet Place", the deaf-mute persona constitutes a natural conflict with the setting of the whole story, which echoes the daughter's resistance to the family and self-growth during the rebellious period. Millison Simmons showed considerable potential in last year's "Surprise in Silence", and his performance in this film is also very natural and harmonious, with very strong dramatic power and credibility.

There are many details in "A Quiet Place" that can make you feel restless, but the best way to watch this film is to touch as little information as possible. As a "silent" film with strong expressiveness and visual elements, "A Quiet Place" can be deeply rooted without a word.

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Extended Reading
  • Kevin 2021-10-20 18:59:48

    Those who sleep and snore are dead, and the rest are non-snorers—— Darwin

  • Jaquan 2022-04-24 07:01:02

    Ah ah ah ah ah! I just like this feeling, concentrate, and then, for a moment, scared to death

A Quiet Place quotes

  • Evelyn: Your father will protect you. Your father will always protect you.

  • Lee Abbott: [Signed] Too noisy.