Welcome to the Quiet Place. Again. The dumbest good scary movie out there. Possibly.
Quiet Place one had logistical snafus and the sequel just goes with it. Krasinski, who cameos here but was the lead of the first movie, and also is the writer/director of both, to his credit, does a very good job. The movie looks good, it scares good. The acting’s great and so is the atmosphere. There’s just a small thing about…how incredibly stupid the entire thing is. So please, bear with me as I go through it play by play. And, though this ought to go without saying, if you haven’t seen the movie, maybe don’t read the play by play review of it first. Ok, you’ve been warned. Now let’s dive into this…and yes, that’s thematical for the movie will feature diving. Ready? Ok. Quiet Place is a movie of an alien apocalypse. The aliens hunt by sound so everyone’s gotta stay really quiet. The family of protagonists in the movie has faired better than most because their daughter is deaf and so they all know how to communicate using ASL. So far so good. Now let the stupid roll in. At the beginning on the first movie, the family comprises two adults and three kids. As all -American as apple pie aside from the fact that apples actually hail from Kazakhstan. AND the wife is pregnant. Yep. During the apocalypse, during the freaking QUIET apocalypse, these two idiots just couldn’t resist each other’s charm or use protection, and so they are going to do the loudest stupidest thing possible and have a baby. DON’T have babies during apocalypse. Quiet or otherwise. Avoid it at all costs. Go medieval if you have to. Just don’t have babies. It’s quite literally the worst time to have babies. There will be no formula, no diapers. The second your baby does that most natural baby thing to do and cry, the aliens will come and eat you. And you will waste all the energy you might have spent protecting your family which has some chances of survival on the baby. Which stands almost zero chance of survival. Think of the greater good. Or just, you know, think… Movie one kills off the youngest kid straight away and the Dad in the end. Movie two has just the wife with a newborn and two young kids. Chances of survival ought to be nil and yet… They walk. Barefoot. Why barefoot? Why risk a permanent disabling injury? There are so many ways to walk quietly while shod. Wrap up your feet. Wear thick socks. Rubber soles shoes. Mocassions. Slippers. Something. But no. They go barefoot and apparently that fine, from slow to fast. Until they aren’t, but they are saved by their dad’s former bestie, who is actually smart about things. The only survivor of his family, he isn’t given to heroic deeds or courageous grand gestures. But he is smart enough to stay in a well-insulated for sound subterranean bunker. It even has vault-like safes to hide in for a short time. Those things lock from the outside so to prevent that a towel is tied around the locking mechanism and each time you get in, you have to remember to put the towel up. Ok, so maybe he isn’t that smart. Because why wouldn’t you just disable the locking mechanism or permanently wrap a towel around it. Why rely on having to remember to do it each and every time under duress and risk get locked in? But maybe he is smart…because he tells them they can’t stay. But then Emily Blunt shows his the baby and bats her baby blues into a begging face and he’s all like, “oh, fine.” Not so smart again. Because yeah, sure, he wasn’t gonna save her and two reasonable age kids, but what he is going to do is risk his life for a baby, a useless and dangerously loud baby who has pretty much zero chance of survival in this ugly new world. But then the daughter of the family figures out how to save everyone. They receive a transmission of Beyond the Sea on the radio and everyone’s all like…oh song, and she’s all like, no it’s a clue, you idiots. And she figures out there are people beyond the sea transmitting it. Suppositionary? Sure. But she goes there. And then she sets off on her own to find them. Because she possesses the power. The power we find out about in movie one – her hearing aid’s static noise amplified over the radio drives the aliens crazy. That’s it, mind you, one hearing aid, one girl against the world, but ok…go with it. She doesn’t stand a chance of course, because she is deaf and alone. But Emily Blunt once again uses her best pleading and begging skills and manipulates the poor man who already saved her and her kids into going after her daughter. This would have been something she’d be able to do herself, but she had to have a freaking baby. Idiot. A baby her oldest son almost dies babysitting. Ok, so the daughter gets a last minute save from the reluctantly heroic guy and they get to the coast and find a boat and fight with some scruffy weirdly burned locals and then boat over to an island. Because, lo and behold, though these aliens are just about perfect killing machines, they cannot swim. What is it with aliens and water? Shyamalan’s Signs, anyone? Ok, moving on. The island is idyllic. And everyone’s all happy. And agreeable to helping the girl transmit the signal. Which doesn’t kill the aliens, mind you, but it stupefies them enough to get a clean shot through the noggin – the only way to kill them. And then it turns out one of the aliens somehow boated over, following out protagonists, and slaughters tons of the island population until the transmission goes…screeeech. And back in the bunker, Emily Blunt’s oldest boy picks up the transmission on his radio and kills an alien with it (it and a gun) too. Yes, the kids are total kickass killers now. The kids are the future. Kids of a certain age, Emily Blunt, not the babies. Don’t have babies in the apocalypse. So yeah, now the future of the entire remaining population depends on having enough guns and the ability to receive a signal from a single hearing aid. Now the most auspicious of scenarios, but like I said, this isn’t a smart movie. It’s fun. But it’s the kind of thing that makes you want to yell at the TV, “No stupid, don’t do that.” I bet there’ll be a third movie too. I’d watch it. Make fun of it all the way through, but still. Not quite a ringing endorsement sure, but there it is.
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