John Krasinski
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Krasinski has clearly absorbed a lesson in conceptual economy from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," and like a "Jaws"-era Steven Spielberg, he takes his time revealing the monsters in all their sharp-fanged, big-eared hideousness.
Like Spielberg in Jaws, Krasinski knows that our imaginations can fill the gaps much more effectively through restraint.
Krasinski takes more than a couple cues from Spielberg — there’s a whole lot of Jurassic Park’s DNA in this movie, but most obviously, Krasinski takes Jaws approach, building fear of his monsters by keeping them off-screen.
Krasinski, who directs and shows a deftness not present in his family drama “The Hollars,” seems inspired by the “Jaws” idea of not showing off the monsters of his creature-feature for most of the movie.
Like Jaws, the monster is a marvel.
In the time-honored tradition of Jaws and Aliens, the monsters are kept offscreen for as long as possible.
Krasinski has clearly absorbed a lesson in conceptual economy from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," and like a "Jaws"-era Steven Spielberg, he takes his time revealing the monsters in all their sharp-fanged, big-eared hideousness.
Krasinski, along with gifted cinematographer Charlotte Brus Christensen, editor Christopher Tellefsen and composer Marco Beltrani, handle these astutely and intelligently for maximum audience freakouts, with knowing nods to The Birds, War of the Worlds, Jurassic Park, The Road, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Walking Dead.
If this was an easy thing to do, we’d have one of these films every week, but Krasinski’s script brings human emotion to a genre entertainment to create suspense in a way that even Hitchcock might have enjoyed (there are superficial similarities to The Birds here).
Picture classic scenes of Ripley tiptoeing through a nest of alien eggs in “Aliens” or Tippi Hedrin and Rod Taylor creeping through a resting flock in “The Birds,” no one daring to make a sound.
And just like that, John goes full “Garden State.”
A gooey morass of indie-movie clichés, the wacky-family dramedy “The Hollars” marks yet another egregiously cutesy attempt to rekindle that “Garden State” magic.
From its first moments, when a grown son fights with his mother for morning bathroom time and finally resorts to an unsavory solution involving an orange juice pitcher and steady aim, “The Hollars” announces that it intends to be another “quirky” dysfunctional family dramedy in the tradition of the fine 2005 film “ Junebug ” and its far less gifted but more eager to please siblings, “ Garden State ” and “ Little Miss Sunshine .”
Written by Jim Strouse, Kaminski’s sophomore directorial project (after “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men”) is a “Garden State”-like indie — neurotic characters coming together around an illness or a death, with the journey of a back-in-town denizen providing dramatic thrust.
Garden State, meet Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.
With a wind of lightly plucked guitars and melancholic folk melodies at its back, The Hollars delivers small-town family drama in the familiar Sundance-indie mode that’s remained ubiquitous since films like Garden State (2004), Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and the like rose to prominence.
Despite its artfully conceived and original set up, “A Quiet Place” admittedly turns into a more conventional scarefest, not unlike “Aliens” or “Predator.”
Picture classic scenes of Ripley tiptoeing through a nest of alien eggs in “Aliens” or Tippi Hedrin and Rod Taylor creeping through a resting flock in “The Birds,” no one daring to make a sound.
A Quiet Place is one of the most effective and intelligently realised horror offerings that will be a talking point amongst fans for years to come and a bonafide Horror classic that is up there with James Cameron’s Aliens.
A little bit of Aliens (giant insectoid carnivores), a little bit of Signs (small farm family under attack, in a house surrounded by cornfields).
In the time-honored tradition of Jaws and Aliens, the monsters are kept offscreen for as long as possible.
At just 90 minutes, A Quiet Place is brisk, but it’s also patient; this is one of those monster movies that builds tension from the absence of the monster, at least until the full-bore, unbroken set-piece of the second half, when all the stillness and pregnant pauses give way to an extended riff on the best scenes in Jurassic Park .
I’m going to make a bold statement here – the last time a film had me gripping the sides of my chair like this was Jurassic Park.
Krasinski, along with gifted cinematographer Charlotte Brus Christensen, editor Christopher Tellefsen and composer Marco Beltrani, handle these astutely and intelligently for maximum audience freakouts, with knowing nods to The Birds, War of the Worlds, Jurassic Park, The Road, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Walking Dead.
The ensuing thriller built on these core relationships invokes the likes of Close Encounters, Jurassic Park or, more recently, War of the Worlds.
These ghoulish, hulking insectoid creations suggest equal parts “Alien” and “Jurassic Park,” which is to say both derivative and grotesque enough to make the simple threat hold tight.
Krasinski takes more than a couple cues from Spielberg — there’s a whole lot of Jurassic Park’s DNA in this movie, but most obviously, Krasinski takes Jaws approach, building fear of his monsters by keeping them off-screen.
Underwater (2020)
Directed by William Eubank
influenced by A Quiet Place (2018)
Themes Visuals Characters Plot Music
Humans being hunted by a creature of unknown or terrifying origin has been one of Hollywood’s most successful, and well-traversed, genres since the birth of cinema, going all the way back to the Universal classics of The Wolf Man and Dracula and seeing various evolutions over the years, from Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking Alien to 2018’s critical darling A Quiet Place.
In addition, the alien design borrows from earlier films like Alien (from which director William Eubank has also cribbed the interiors), Aliens and A Quiet Place , to name just three.
I like this monster about as much as the one Emily Blunt dealt with in “A Quiet Place.”
They have the look of aquatic cousins of the alien invaders of “A Quiet Place.”
Director William Eubank does a serviceable job painting by numbers, but each number invites comparisons with another film that did the same thing better – such as “The Descent” or the more recent “A Quiet Place.”
The score by Marco Beltrami ( Ford v Ferrari , A Quiet Place ) and Brandon Roberts ( Logan , World War Z ) is solid and adds an extra element of tension to an already hectic situation.
DP Charlotte Bruus Christensen, who’s lensed Vinterberg’s The Hunt (2012), not to mention Fences (2016) and the first A Quiet Place (2018), combines her skill sets and palettes intriguingly, and solidifies two distinct vibes across the film’s timelines.
Danish director Janus Metz (see “Borg vs. McEnroe” and the series “ZeroZeroZero”) works with fellow countryman and talented cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christiansen (see “The Hunt,” “A Quiet Place” and “Fences”) to imbue an air of mystery to the look of this mostly two-hander narrative.
As in her work for “The Girl on the Train,” “Fences,” “The Hunt,” and “A Quiet Place,” director of photography Charlotte Bruus Christensen creates revealing compositions.
The film also has Charlotte Bruus Christensen (who has worked on projects like the 2012 film- The Hunt and the 2018 film- A Quiet Place ) serving as its cinematographer and, it shows in every shot starting from the long shots to the duo bathed playfully in the fading sunlight at dinner.
If the film’s locale lends it an alluring novelty, Tertius Kapp’s nominally original screenplay brings to mind recent genre touchstones from “Annihilation” to “A Quiet Place.”
At night, sightless incarnations that look like something from “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) and sound like and behave like the marauding beasties in “A Quiet Place” (2018) come.
Like a cross between “The Last of Us” and “A Quiet Place” with an eco-horror and biblical subtext, Jaco Bower’s “Gaia” gets the viewer lost in the woods of their nightmares, contaminated with deadly creatures lurking in the shadows and an eerie sense of dread.
Then, it begins to feel like a thriller in the image of A Quiet Place .
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Directed by Chris McKay
influenced by A Quiet Place (2018)
Themes Visuals Characters Music
No doubt inspired by A Quiet Place, they’re the movie’s biggest card to play, and suitably horrifying in design.
There’s this, there’s 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow (the other time travel/alien invasion flick), A Quiet Place (2018), even the robots of Oblivion (2013).
It’s truly a shame that a studio like Paramount Pictures, who once might take a chance on an Arrival or an Annihilation or a Cloverfield, Super 8, and yes, A Quiet Place, now feels it’s safer to sell off a mega-budget sci-fi film like The Tomorrow War.
(The aliens look just like the monsters from Cloverfield, and Stranger Things, and A Quiet Place and Underwater and oh my god can we please start designing some different monsters already.)
They're basically the spindly, fast-moving, sharp-toothed creatures from A Quiet Place , only with a few extras, like tentacles that can fire deadly white spikes.
Their presence is forwarded with clicking that made us think of A Quiet Place.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced A Quiet Place (2018)
Visuals
Krasinski, along with gifted cinematographer Charlotte Brus Christensen, editor Christopher Tellefsen and composer Marco Beltrani, handle these astutely and intelligently for maximum audience freakouts, with knowing nods to The Birds, War of the Worlds, Jurassic Park, The Road, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Walking Dead.
But he also builds a fantastically sustained mood, in ways that feels both completely modern and pleasingly old-school, with its shades of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and other ’80s touchstones.
As with Jordan Peele’s 2017 “Get Out,” “A Quiet Place” is a horror movie made by someone — John Krasinski of “The Office” — primarily known for comedy.
I was reminded of the surprise I felt after seeing last year's Get Out.
Krasinski turns in an impressive feature filmmaking debut — more Get Out than It Comes at Night (and that’s a very good thing).
In the same way that film a film like The Babadook addressed the concept of grief, or how Get Out shined a light on racism in modern America, so too does A Quiet Place offer up a fascinating look at the struggles of parenting and keeping a family together in the face of adversity.
“A Quiet Place” doesn’t have the pin-you-to-your-seat originality of “Get Out,” or the psychological depth and pure scare impact of “Lights Out” or the wall-to-wall intensity of “Don’t Breathe,” but it is one of the smarter and more involving horror films of the last few years.
The monsters are derivative — the Alien franchise cut with a little War of the Worlds — and barely seen, usually a good strategy in horror movies but maybe also a practical matter here, as the CGI creature effects are just so-so.
They are very grotesque, bigger versions of the polyp-like succubus which exploded out of John Hurt’s stomach in Alien.
A Quiet Place (??? out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters nationwide Friday) is essentially Alien on a farm: Even though there are cornfields and land for days, there's a constant state of panic and claustrophobia for a family stalked by monsters who attack anything that makes noise.
At times, we might be watching an “Alien” sequel in which the creature had mated with a very nasty and scolding librarian.
Based on a screenplay credited to Bryan Woods, Scott Beck and Krasinski, the tight, scary film’s action is set against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic world, one already decimated by sightless, flesh-tearing, lizardy Alien-esque creatures armed with trigger reflexes, supersensitive hearing and an insatiable hunger for human flesh.
These ghoulish, hulking insectoid creations suggest equal parts “Alien” and “Jurassic Park,” which is to say both derivative and grotesque enough to make the simple threat hold tight.
Director Mark Raso ("Kodachrome") is going for a stark vibe along the lines of "The Walking Dead" and "A Quiet Place," but there simply isn't enough plot to drive the story forward.
Awake is the latest word jumble premise-turned-feature film to follow in the high-concept footsteps of Bird Box (2018), A Quiet Place (2018), and Army of the Dead (2021), and its setup is every bit as simple.
Ironically likely to be a cure for insomnia – I found myself drifting as the overwrought performances built towards a deathly dull denouement (although the over-caffeinated score is set to maximum irritation) – Awake is definitely not this year’s A Quiet Place or Bird Box , just a really massive disappointment.
There’s no one element of Awake that’s overly cringeworthy or damning, but like many other recent horror/thrillers (A Quiet Place, Bird Box, etc.), it seems to be just one big thought experiment: Making people unable to do one common thing and then extrapolating on what the logical resulting actions of that event would mean, based somewhat on science, but not really worried about the nitty-gritty of it.
While it's not completely fair to compare any movie to another, the parallels between “The Silence” and “ A Quiet Place ” are too prominent to ignore.
Like...isn’t this just A Quiet Place ?
It’s impossible to watch the film without thinking about John Krasinki’s A Quiet Place, last year’s sleeper hit.
Following the success of A Quiet Place and Netflix's own Bird Box , you would think the script for The Silence was written by the streaming giant's recommendation algorithm.
If the streaming service’s recent hit “ Bird Box ” seemed like an ocular companion to the aural deprivation of “ A Quiet Place ,” this new film feels like a de facto prequel, catching the apocalyptic moment when hordes of sound-sensitive creatures wipe out the bulk of humanity.
Yes, it's A Quiet Place meets Bird Box , but the real problem isn't that The Silence invites an easy comparison.
Hulu delivers a forgettable post-apocalyptic pastiche that borrows liberally from “The Terminator,” “The Last of Us,” and “A Quiet Place."
The film attempts to give A Quiet Place vibe, toying with the possibility that new life could result in sudden death.
It’s a familiar dystopian premise that plays out in narrative terms redolent of myriad recent movies like “A Quiet Place.”
MOTHER/ANDROID is hardly the first to try to cash in on the success of “A Quiet Place” – which has already generated a lackluster sequel – but it’s hard to see how this would have been made without it.
Reminiscent of A Quiet Place , they have to be completely silent to avoid attracting attention to get through.
All of which is to say: “A Quiet Place” has the smart/dumb, original/derivative, logic/anti-logic quality of a mid-period M. Night Shyamalan special like “Signs” or “The Village.”
I also got a sense of cinematic déjà vu from time to time, due to some superficial similarities to M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs,” from the farm setting to the actual sounds the aliens make.
I’m comparing the tension to Scott’s film, but many of you will find the story similar to M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs.”
Then, too, there’s the uncomfortable recognition that a lawsuit is almost certainly about to drop over the distinct similarities between the screenplay and Tim Lebbon’s novel The Silence (recently filmed but not yet released) and, before you even get there, some obvious comparisons to M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs and TV’s The Walking Dead.
John Krasinski’s “A Quiet Place,” a Michael Bay-produced sci-fi-horror hybrid with a lot in common with M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 hit “Signs,” comes out of the SXSW Festival with a lot of buzz.
Whether intentional or not, "A Quiet Place" intermittently unspools like a loose remake of M. Night Shyamalan's scary, heartrending 2002 triumph " Signs ."
The sun is punishing, the weather’s cataclysmic, the wind so powerful it’s enough to send your hat flying off into the air, but other than that the post-apocalyptic wasteland featured in Finch is fairly tame compared to the afterworlds we’ve seen in such films as The Road , The Book of Eli , Mad Max 2,3, &4 , A Quiet Place , Planet of the Apes , and so forth.
In a manner akin to “Moon,” “The Martian,” “A Quiet Place,” and “Arctic,” the practically dialogue-free, yet highly-informative opening act delivers volumes of information.
And while the film introduces a deaf character and gestures at the potential to play with silence and perspective, a la Hush or A Quiet Place, those threads never become essential to the film’s grammar.
…but Primate also does itself no favors by cribbing from Halloween, Scream, A Quiet Place, and other tired horror tropes.
You could add El Orfanato and Neil Marshall's The Descent – which A Quiet Place surely nods to – to that list.
The alien, which is something of a cross between a velociraptor and the set-of-fangs within set-of-fangs perfect organism from “Alien,” can’t see; that puts it somewhere between “Tremors” and “Pitch Black.”
That might sound quite a bit like the 1990 film "Tremors" where subterranean "worms" likewise hunted by sound and related vibrations.