‘Quiet Place’ questions shout for answers
Spoiler alert! Many plot points are discussed below. Stop reading now if you haven’t seen A Quiet Place.
A Quiet Place silently scared the living heck out of me.
Director, star and co-writer John Krasinski’s silent thriller places his screen family, including real-life wife Emily Blunt, in a future where aliens are alerted to the slightest sound with instant, lethal results.
I stoically stifled cries of pure fear in the theater. But I also wanted to yell some big questions at the screen on a few critical issues. That would have alerted the aliens to my presence, however.
So I’m asking now.
How could you leave your kids unattended like that?
Oldest sibling Regan Abbott (the heartbreakingly effective Millicent Simmonds) is consumed by guilt after giving her youngest brother, Beau (Cade Woodward), a rocket ship. Beau flips it on and it’s alien liftoff time.
But Beau is already a dead kid walking. Earlier, we saw him climb precariously to grab the toy from a high store shelf (dumb), nearly topple (so dead) and then drop it (sis caught it).
Mom and Dad, you got things going on. I get it. But in this world, you’ve got to mind the kid.
Why didn’t they soundproof the house?
The family can talk by a loud waterfall that drowns out their words and in a room in the barn with a mattress pulled over the opening. If this is effective, let’s replicate it. Soundproof the house and the family could record heavy metal albums.
You’re having a baby? You’re kidding, right?
Boy, it’s a big shocker to see that Blunt’s Evelyn is highly preggers. It’s Day 424 of the alien invasion, so clearly the couple managed some enviable quiet time away from the kiddos. Fair enough. But birth control, people! Babies are a death sentence in this world. Putting on the infant oxygen mask and placing the child in a soundproof coffin (something from Dystopic Parenting magazine?) will buy a couple days, max.
No one thought of weaponizing noise?
We see from newspaper clippings pinned to the wall (print media outlasts the Internet!) that the government knew about these aliens and their lethal, highly sensitive hearing.
If I were a national security adviser or a police chief, I might think of trying to exploit this: high-pitched sonic weapons, Mariah Carey’s Emotions played full blast, the Walmart yodeling kid.
But only Regan, who is deaf, figures out that aliens can’t deal with reverb from her hearing aid. That’s a pretty big Achilles heel for an alpha alien.
Isn’t silent childbirth enough to suffer?
For dramatic effect, we want Evelyn to endure extreme hardship without making a sound as the alien prowls nearby. Even speaking as someone who has not and will not give birth, isn’t labor without drugs more than enough for her to silently (and miraculously) suffer? There has to be a nail somehow sticking up on the stairs to be trod upon with bare feet? That’s a pain too far.