A QUIET PLACE
A Quiet Place is the story of a family living on a farm in a post-apocalyptic world where they’re occasionally hunted by blind monsters who have super hearing. You can’t make a single sound or else the creatures are going to hear you and then they’re going to hunt you. It stars real life married couple John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, who I bet had lots of on-set conversations like “what were you thinking for dinner?” “I don’t know, I was just thinking I’d fill up on bagels here.” while standing next to props of aliens with big ears.
Wikipedia says that the film drew inspiration from Alien, No Country for Old Men, and In The Bedroom. Which, sure, okay, your killer alien movie can be inspired by kitchen sink Tom Wilkinson/Sissy Spacek drama In The Bedroom. After Die Hard came out, every knock-off was pitched the same way. Under Siege was "Die Hard but on a boat", Air Force One was "Die Hard but on a plane". None of us could have predicted that In The Bedroom could be used in the same way, but A Quiet Place is clearly just "In The Bedroom but with xenomorphs". Get me an exec on the line, I've got a killer pitch for "In The Bedroom but in space".
What do we think of John Krasinski? I’m sure he’s a nice enough dude, but I bet he also says things like “The inspiration for my alien horror movie? In The Bedroom.” I can never pinpoint why it is I don’t dig Krasinski. I think it’s because he comes across like a boyfriend who thinks he's Matt Damon.
There’s that story about Will Smith in the 90s when he was on Fresh Prince and had a plan to become the biggest star in the world, so he studied all the box office results for every film for the past twenty years or something, and he came to the conclusion: “Aliens. I gotta make a movie with aliens”, and then did Independence Day and Men In Black and became the biggest star in the world. To me, John Krasinski always looks like he’d corner you at a party and tell you that same plan, “The Office is my Fresh Prince, you get me? And A Quiet Placeis my Independence Day” and the whole time you’re thinking ‘yeah, but dude, you’re not Will Smith, you’re Carlton’.
If A Quiet Place had a catchphrase it’d be the shoosh face. You’d think in a world where being quiet is like their number one hobby, that they’d have really gotten on top of the whole ‘being shoosh’ thing. But it seems that barely thirty minutes go by in a day before somebody is whipping that index finger in front of their mouth again.
Now, where would I, Peter Jones, fit into A Quiet Place?
I wouldn’t end up on the farm with the family from the film, but I’m sure viewers would love a scene to see how other people in the world dealt with these monsters. Specifically, how were folks dealing with these creatures in Melbourne, Australia?
IF I WERE IN 'A QUIET PLACE' I WOULD: DIE, DESERVEDLY SO
