Summer in Barcelona. A time of heat, humidity, and the cautious running of that oh-so-expensive air conditioning. Many of my friends, quite sensibly, choose August as the time to take holidays out of the city. But this year, I didn’t have enough money saved to do that, so in between frequent trips to beaches and parks, I’ve been having my own private little film festival instead.
Generally, I’ve been watching at least two films a day. The rule is that, ideally, it has to be a film I’ve never seen. If I have seen it, it has to have been only once, and many years ago (there were a few of these). As we’re coming up to the end of August, and work’s about to begin again, I thought I’d jot down some capsule reviews of the movies I’ve watched, in no particular order. They stretch from the 1930s to 2024, of all kinds of genres, some big budget extravaganzas, some little known indies…
We start with my rapid acquaintance with a recent franchise that’s passed me by till now. Well, living in rowdy central Barcelona, what could be more welcome than… A Quiet Place?
A Quiet Place (US, 2018)
This one had been hanging around on my hard drive for a couple of years, and I finally got round to watching it. It’s a small scale, effective little tale of a family surviving in the countryside after an apocalyptic alien invasion. Nothing particularly original there – see also M Night Shyamalan’s Signs – but the high concept hook here was the nature of the flesh-eating beasties. Being blind, they hunt entirely by sound, which means any survivors have had to get used to being very, very quiet.
The Abbott family have some advantages here, with their deaf daughter meaning they’re already used to communicating in sign language (American Sign Language, which is different from others). John Krasinski, writing, starring and directing, pulls off a taut little thriller with rounded, likeable characters in a very limited setting of a small area of the Appalachians. The movie is fairly low budget, so the creatures’ appearances are kept to a minimum, and this sparing use gives them greater impact.
Inevitably, the movie is very clever with its use of sound, with a sparse musical score and next to audible dialogue. This makes for an interestingly styled movie, but not one to watch if you’re averse to subtitles (unless you’re fluent in ASL, I guess). 8/10
A Quiet Place Part II (US, 2020)
Having waited so long to watch the first one, I was able to do the sequel and the prequel immediately after. Which was nice. Of course there was a sequel – the first movie was a hit, and now they’re being described as “the Quiet Place universe”. Naturally.
The budget’s obviously been upped for this one, with a prologue harking back to the chaos of the alien’s initial landing. Besides Emily Blunt and her family from the first movie, we get Big Star Cillian Murphy for this instalment, which builds nicely on the plot from the first. Other survivors are encountered this time, ranging from feral bandits to a nice middle class community, which widens out the small cast of the previous movie. Krasinski, writing and directing again, pulls off some great set pieces involving the terrifying creatures – and the increased budget means we see plenty more of them this time.
It’s well done, but feels like a more conventional example of this kind of thing now that the high concept of silence is no longer a novelty. Still pretty good though. 7/10
A Quiet Place: Day One (US, 2024)
In the absence (so far) of another sequel, the franchise is kept going with this prequel, once again showing the beginning of the aliens’ attack, but this time from the expensive location of New York City. With a much bigger budget than either of the previous films, this feels much more like a conventional apocalyptic blockbuster.
Its strength lies in its characters. This is the first film in the series not to be directed by John Krasinski, and also the first not to feature the Abbott family led by Emily Blunt (although we do see Djimon Hounsou, leader of the community from Part II, escaping from NYC). Instead, we get nihilistic terminal cancer patient Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) along with her implausibly patient and good-natured cat. They team up with milquetoast English law student Eric (Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn) to escape the city. Naturally, learning and bonding ensue.
There’s still some good set pieces, and the location of NYC gives them added impact. The aftermath of the first attack sees Sam, covered in dust, wandering dazedly through clouds of debris like fog – it’s a not very subtle allusion to the oft shown aftermath of the 9’11 attacks. Well, with Michael Bay producing, it’s a surprise the previous films were as subtle as they were.
This is… not bad, but we’ve been here before. Not just in this franchise, but plenty of others. So while it was well enough done, if you’ve seen the first two movies, there’ll be little to surprise you here. 5/10
Arcadian (US, 2024)
And… we’re back to the first A Quiet Place, but without the high concept hook or indeed any sense of originality. Nicolas Cage, in an unusually subdued performance, stars as the dad of two teenage boys, who he has improbably brought up single handed in the aftermath of… you guessed it, an apocalyptic alien invasion. The creatures look more than a little like the Quiet Place ones, as does the setting, a remote farmhouse and its environs. It’s obviously supposed to be in America, and it’s equally obviously not filmed there – in fact, it was shot in Ireland.
We’ve been here before, in almost every way, and while Cage normally picks interesting films, here he’s chosen one that’s so tediously unoriginal that you’ll be glancing at your watch while it goes through the motions of all the genre’s usual plot beats. Even the characters, such a strength of the Quiet Place series, are sketchy and lacking depth, despite the efforts of a fair cast.
It’s not actively bad. But you have seen it done before, and better, more times than you care to remember. 3/10
Simon’s Incoherent Blog 