This was
a movie that I had some interest in when it came out – I like both Emily Blunt
and John Krasinski, it has a Deaf connection, and the central conceit was
intriguing – but I just never got around to it.
While its speculative Oscar-nom potential didn’t pan out, I understand
why people were throwing its name around in different categories. This is a neat, atmospheric horror piece that
uses its hook to good effect, and I have to imagine that seeing it in a crowded
theater made for a pretty singular experience.
We enter
the story in media res, some time after society has been devastated by vicious
blind monsters that hunt by sound. An
isolated family has learned to live in silence:
covering their farm with sound-muffling padding and other adaptations,
communicating in sign language (the oldest child is Deaf,) and using lights and
other visual cues as signals. More than
a year into this silent siege, everything with the monsters comes to a head.
Okay, so
there are some notable plotholes. Namely,
why are the parents having a baby when making noise will kill them? I get that they’ve spent a good chunk of the
last nine months preparing a soundproof cellar for the baby, but why is this
happening in the first place? 1) This puts the entire family in so much more
danger. 2) Why would they want to bring
a baby into such a nightmarish world? 3)
If it was an accident, were they not using protection, and/or why didn’t they
use safer ways of being intimate? Don’t
get me wrong – the wife going into labor and not being able to make a sound makes
for an incredibly tense scene, but why is she even in this situation?
Now that
that’s out of the way… Logic gaps aside, it really is an effective horror
movie. Like the classic Buffy episode “Hush,” it takes advantage
of its premise to tell a really creative story.
The suspense is excellent, the cinematography heightens the mood, and
John Krasinski’s direction is both scary and engaging.
The
acting is also very good. Needless to
say, Blunt is fantastic. She and
real-life husband Krasinski have beautiful chemistry, and both of them play
well off the child actors. Without a ton
of dialogue or information about the characters (we don’t even know their
names,) they create a family dynamic that feels specific and genuine.
Also, can
I just point out that these people have survived this long in large part
because the parents decided to learn the language of their Deaf daughter and
then raised their young children bilingual?
They would’ve had no hope of conveying necessary instructions to their
youngest if he hadn’t already known sign, it’s so much faster and less
cumbersome than trying to write notes all the time (especially in dangerous
situations,) and having an easy way to communicate helps keep them from going
crazy after more than a year of living in this very intense manner. Let that be a lesson to you hearing parents
of Deaf children. Learn your child’s
language: in addition to just being the
right thing to do, it could save you from sound-sensitive monsters
someday. (Side note: Blunt and Krasinski’s signing is pretty good
here, better than I usually see from hearing people in movies – looking at you,
Sally Hawkins! While their signs are by
no means fluent, they’re not super stilted and choppy-looking, and Blunt in
particular is quite expressive.)
Warnings
Monster
violence, thematic elements, and tons of scariness.
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