A Quiet Place: In summary: nasty (and kinda generic looking in a modern-movie, big-toothed, weird-headed, way) aliens spend all their time running around the countryside slashing humans (or racoons) who are too loud. A family holes up in their farm trying to get by, very quietly, in such a world.
On the upside: there are quite a few scares, but to be honest, they are mostly the relatively cheap jump-scare variety. Acting is pretty good.
On the downside: [lots of spoilers ahead] a lot does not bear too much thinking about. For one thing: I was puzzled as to how the corn fields got planted, since the time line indicated that they must have been planted well after the aliens arrived. [OK, I'll be generous here, and allow that maybe the aliens were busy devastating the towns and cities before they headed into the countryside. But even then, would seem a tad odd that the farmers just got on with planting as if there were no alien invasion going on.]
For a second thing: these aliens don't look too smart, and don't seem to eat their human and animal victims: just slash them open and run. That's sort of odd behaviour, even for an alien, isn't it? What is the motivation for killing all noisy humans?*
A third thing: corn in silos is like quicksand? I suspected not, and the comments by several (apparent) farmers on this Reddit thread indicate that my scepticism was justified.
There are many other points I found myself doubting: sure, being a new mother can be tiring, but sleeping through a basement flood that big? Especially as she would presumably have become used to sleeping in total silence for a year or more.
The film overall reminded me too much of the woeful (and even sillier) Signs with Mel Gibson: it also had a lot of corn and aliens, a Christian family, and aliens weirdly unprepared for human resistance by use of something pretty foreseeable. (Actually, blindingly obvious, in the case of Signs.) OK, again, being generous, maybe these latest aliens are just like the equivalent of hungry pet wolves let loose on the planet by their smart owners we never see. (Again, why is the obvious question.)
I don't regret watching it, and I can see how it was pitched successfully as a high concept alien invasion story: but it didn't deserve the very strong critical reception. It pushed the plausibility boundaries way too often for that.
* I have just now read an article that says it's clear by the end that the aliens are killing because they just need a silent planet on which to live. If they are that sensitive to any and all sound - how do they put up with rain? Did they cross light years to get here without inventing earplugs or noise reducing headphones? I mean, they have huge ear holes, to be sure, but this still seems a bit silly.
No comments:
Post a Comment