We have concluded the nine amazing films in our Resilience series, and what better way to end October than showing one of the best scary movies over the last decade the day before Halloween? A Quiet Place is a 2018 drama/thriller directed, co-written, and starring John Krasinski, who is most famous for his role as Jim Halpert on NBC’s The Office. Krasinski brilliantly directs A Quiet Place from beginning to end, showing the story of surviving the apocalypse through love, trust, and resilience.
Director, co-writer, and actor John Krasinski gives an interview about the film.
A Quiet Place is set in the year 2020, so the not-so-distant future, where strange alien creatures have taken over the world. They are totally blind but have ultra sensitive hearing. If you make even the slightest peep, they will hear you, find you, and kill you. The Abbott family, lead by father Lee (Krasinski) and wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt, Krasinski’s real-life wife) have perfected sign language, due to their oldest daughter Regan (played by real-life deaf actor Milicent Simmons) being deaf, so they are able to communicate in order to survive. Similar to how Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water uses sign language in order to show love and connection, the Abbott family uses it in order to survive and stay ahead of everyone.
Lee Abbott (Krasinski) gives the quiet sign to his family while out hunting.
A Quiet Place depicts resilience as much as any film in our series. The Abbott family are nearly all alone and need to survive by speaking to each other through sign language. Regan, the older child who is deaf, is filled with grief and anger. However, she is determined to do something for her family. She tries to prove herself to her dad, which causes her and her brother to be imperiled. That situation requires her, her brother, and her father to demonstrate resilience in the face of the monsters’ horrifying threat.
Regan (Millicent Simmons) and Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) look on in horror as their brother/son is threatened by an alien.
Paternal responsibility has been a common theme we have seen in our film series, with examples in films such as Moonlight and Eighth Grade. A Quiet Place is no exception, as we see Lee and Evelyn having to make sure not only that they survive, but that their children do as well, teaching them the necessary art of survival. Lee invents special hearing ads for Regan, showing his intelligence and survival instincts. When an pregnant goes into labor, all alone in the house and wounded, the aliens appear. She has to remain calm and silent through the pain of childbirth. She doesn’t make a sound until her son lights off rockets as sound distraction, allowing her to cry out in pain, Evelyn displays her resilience and will to protect her unborn child in the most difficult circumstance.
Evelyn Abbott (Blunt) gives birth in the families’ bathtub while trying to remain dead silent
Overall, the movie demonstrates resilience in one of the most epic situations, that being the apocalypse. A Quiet Place is a credit to the directing talent of John Krasinski and the acting talent of his wife Emily Blunt. Not only is it a film that demonstrates a remarkable amount of resilience, but it is one that also reimagines what true horror–evoked primarily through silence–can be. A Quiet Place acts as the perfect cap to out film series relating to Resilience, echoing themes of survival and the ability to overcome adversity.
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