The timeline of the movie "Quiet Place 2" takes over the first part, telling the story of the heroine Evelyn, who was forced to lead the children away from their homes after her husband Li Weiai sacrificed her life and seek survival in a crisis-ridden apocalypse. Compared with the closed-space narrative in the first part, "A Quiet Place 2" spreads the world view more magnificently, in which we can not only see why alien creatures came to the earth and the apocalyptic picture after they invaded the earth, but also The experience and growth of young characters such as Marcus.
Needless to say, the success of the "Quiet Place" series is largely due to its high-concept setting of "Sound and Death". Great sense of tension and depression. The ferocious and terrifying alien creatures in the film have no vision, but their hearing is extremely sensitive. Even if humans make a small sound, they will follow the sound from a few miles away and brutally kill humans.
Therefore, "sound" has become a key element of the "Quiet Place" series. It not only affects the life and death of the characters, but also affects the audience's viewing experience. So we see that with the high concept of "Sound and Death", "Silent Place 2" has a lot of thoughts on sound design.
First of all, the film will deliberately highlight various sound elements in the protagonist's living environment. For example, in a set of empty mirrors at the beginning of the film, we can clearly hear the sound of the wind, the squeaking of the signal lights in the wind, and the switching of traffic lights on a lonely street; and for about 15 minutes in the film, with Eve Lin's family moved from indoors to outdoors, and the sound of insects became louder and louder until finally intertwined into annoying noises. These details all highlight the importance of sound in the film.
The voices of Evelyn’s feet stepping on fallen leaves, backpacks hooking on barbed wire, etc. are matched by actress Emily Blunt’s hesitant trembling and cautiously superb performance, and tightly clinging to the audience’s heartstrings. These voices are common in daily life. At this moment, it has become a terrifying element of horror, which is a major novelty in sound design brought by the high concept of the film.
Secondly, the film uses his daughter Reagan to show the deaf person’s perception of the environment from the subjective perspective of the deaf . This sound "trick" breaks the traditional sound design ideas of thriller horror films, fully mobilizes the audience’s sensory experience and makes the film thriller. The sense of despair is even higher. There are two impressive things in the film:
One is that at the beginning of the film, an alien creature suddenly rushed out to attack the crowd, and the streets fell into chaos, but Reagan, who was sitting in the car, was deaf and was unaware of everything around him. This is the first time we really feel the helplessness of the deaf. In such a crisis-ridden apocalypse, being deprived of hearing is tantamount to exposing one's life to the claws of monsters. This 15-second silence not only enhanced the immersion of watching the movie, but also made us more concerned about Reagan's next destiny.
Second, in the middle of the film, Reagan wakes up and finds that Emmet is missing with her hearing aid. She subconsciously thinks Emmet died like her father, crying in the garden. There is still no sound in this passage, but we can feel strongly that Regan's regret and despair almost overflow the screen. Then when Emmet came to Reagan again with the hearing aid, the picture gradually filled with sound. At this time, the sound did not mean danger and death, but the hope of life. The new ideology generated under the concept.
Third, the film also achieved the artistic effect of rendering the horror atmosphere, mobilizing the audience's emotions, and enriching the auditory level through the organic arrangement of different sounds, and the overlapping of simultaneous sounds and soundtracks. For example, about 15 minutes into the film, there is a plot in which Evelyn and Reagan separate to find something. The director uses cross-editing to stagger the sound of "noisy" and "quiet". )-Regan tipping down the stairs (quiet)-Evelyn sneaking in the leaky basement (noisy)-Regan looking for the radio on the shelf (quiet)", obtaining a distinct listening experience.
Another example is the first time that Evelyn’s family was attacked by a monster in the wild. The director overlapped the restless string music, the roar of the monster, and the harsh sound waves to create a powerful situation. At the same time, all the sounds were loaded by Evelyn’s bullets. The moment came to an abrupt end, and the subsequent shot released the tension that the audience had accumulated for a long time. While we were heartily heartily, we were also in awe of Evelyn’s heroic behavior.
At the same time, due to the grander world view of "A Quiet Place 2", it also got rid of the first "small and simple" aesthetic style in its narrative, and moved towards complexity and fancy. The director tried to use a way to cover a wider range of narrative themes, a more three-dimensional character image, and a more complex narrative structure in the work to dispel the public's impression of the "Small-cost B-level film" of the "Quiet Place" series. It is not difficult to see Director John Krasinski wants to make "A Quiet Place" an ambition to build a growth line IP.
However, compared with the old-fashioned themes of family affection, human nature, and youth growth, as well as the slightly blunt character arc changes in the film, I would like to talk more about the film's fine polishing of the multi-line narrative.
The more prominent multi-line narrative passage in the film occurred after Reagan left. Emmet went to Reagan and Evelyn went to find medicine. The narrative clues were divided into three ways: Marcus, Evelyn, and Reagan. With Emmet. The narrative rhythms of these three clues are different. The director uses cross-editing to make the three clues interweave, so that the film’s narrative rhythm is relaxed and the suspense is retained to the greatest extent. Passing by the unknown figure, a sense of suspense arose. Just when we were eager to know whether the figure was an alien monster, the director didn’t say anything and turned to tell the story of Evelyn and Marcus, which shook the audience. appetite.
In the climax of this plot, as Evelyn goes back to kill the monster, the narrative clues move from three lines to two lines. Although the crises on the two lines are different at this time, the director wisely uses water, fire, suffocation and other similar drama elements to achieve smooth switching between different spaces, which does not cause us to feel a sense of jumping out of the movie, but also to watch. Shadow mood plays a bonus effect of "1+1>2".
Back to the title, why is the high concept of the film a double-edged sword?
From a commercial point of view, the high-concept setting of "Sound and Death" is undoubtedly successful. It distinguishes "A Quiet Place" from the scare mechanism of traditional thriller horror films, and has a good linkage effect on the screen. But from the perspective of the play, this high concept will hinder the further development of the "Quiet Place" series to a certain extent, or put forward higher requirements for the screenwriter's level of play. If the creator fails to grasp the delicate balance between the high-concept setting of "Sound and Die" and the complex narrative content, the artistic presentation of the film will be greatly reduced . This has actually been revealed in "A Quiet Place 2" Clues.
"Spoken and die" means that if the protagonist wants to survive, he must speak less and do less activity. In "A Quiet Place 1", the Evelyn family did achieve these two points, so the work was recognized by the audience. But it should be noted that the content of the story of "A Quiet Place 1" is quite refined, there is no deep discussion of human nature, there is no perfect arc transformation of the characters, and there is no complicated and changeable narrative structure tricks. Its drama task is very simple. : How can a family avoid monster killing in a closed space. In other words, the director only needs to find a way to satisfy the audience's sensory experience, because the high concept of the film is already attractive enough.
But in "A Quiet Place 2", the director not only wants to use Emmet to pinpoint the ugly human nature, but also wants to show the growth of the characters through Marcus, so as to make up for the shortcomings of the first play and make it for the next one. The purpose of paving roads and bridges inevitably includes a lot of dialogue, because these complex information cannot be accurately conveyed to the audience only through sign language communication between characters and sound design. Although the director has found a safe enough space environment (underground of the factory, uninhabited island) for these dialogues, we can still feel the deviation from the setting of the film. The addition of a large number of dialogues not only dispelled the uniqueness of the film’s “voicing is death” setting, but also caused the film’s narrative rhythm to be delayed. This is one of the reasons why many people think that "Silent Place 2" is broken before and after.
Secondly, with the further development of the world view, the scope of activities of the characters in "A Quiet Place 2" has also expanded from a closed space to an open field. In the film, not only a large number of warm and bright daylight scenery appears, but also alien creatures frequently appear. The horror master Lovecraft once said: "The oldest and strongest fear is the unknown." If you look back on "A Quiet Place 1", it is not difficult to find that, in addition to high concepts, closed spaces, night scenes, and monsters still hold the pipa. Designs such as "half-masked" have effectively enhanced the film’s horror atmosphere, while the expansion of the range of activities of the characters in "A Quiet Place 2" has compromised the original mysterious temperament of the film and relegated it to a mediocre monster movie.
At the same time, in order to enrich the plot, the director deliberately let the characters perform certain activities, but due to the unclear motives of these activities, the image of the characters was damaged, and many audiences even criticized "IQ offline". For example, Reagan was attacked by a monster after entering the unmanned vehicle. The director gave her the motivation to get a first aid kit for her brother Marcus, but she had a fierce argument with Marcus just before she left, and she did not get the first aid kit. Going back to find Marcus, obviously this motive was unfounded, and it was contrary to her always smart and agile personality. After careful study, Reagan’s "carriage adventure" is more for the development of the plot. On the one hand, it can attract alien creatures to increase the spectacle of the film, and on the other hand, it also promotes the warming of the friendship between Reagan and Emmet. , Lay the foundation for Emmet's subsequent emotional transformation.
In fact, this kind of plot weaving with instrumentality instead of logic is everywhere in "A Quiet Place 2". For example, why does the timid Marcus dare to wander the factory alone when he has limited mobility? Why did the black uncle on the island speak to Emmet at the door without knowing that the monster was thrown away? Why can some people head a monster easily, but some people head it to no avail? These problems have exposed the lack of rigor and meticulousness of the screenwriters in creation, and the consequences of blindly pursuing sensory stimulation will make the logical edifice of the whole film tottering.
Some netizens said that "A Quiet Place" is a movie that you can't watch with your head. I think this sentence has two meanings. One is that "A Quiet Place" has many logical flaws in the play that cannot be studied in detail; the other is that if you look at "Quiet Place" too wisely, you will lose a lot of senses. pleasure. It is true that in the face of many unsatisfactory points in the story, this sentence is understandable as a self-compromise and psychological comfort for the audience, but if the creator wants to make "A Quiet Place" a market that can stand the test of time and time For long-term IP, it is necessary to adhere to high standards and strict requirements in the drama, further careful thinking and fine polishing, especially to reconcile the contradiction between the high concept of the film and the complex narrative, and to fill in the obvious logical loopholes.
As a creator, always remember that a novel high concept is only the first step to the success of the film, because no matter how new and unique high concept is, it can only surprise the audience for a while. A story full of sincerity and soul of creators that can be considered.
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