Discuss A Quiet Place
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Great popcorn flick, but lacking in intellectual substance
posted by GeffSTAFFMOD on April 19, 2018 at 3:49 AM
I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing. I like popcorn flicks like this, I'm just trying to find out if anyone disagrees with my assessment.
What is a film that has intellectual substance, from my perspective? A good recent example would be Annihilation. The film has a great deal of allegory and symbolism and there are layers for the audience the unravel and think about. I'd say Annihilation is a film that requires a little more effort on the part of the film-goer to fully appreciate. There are nuances and details that are instrumental in telling a full hidden story, and different film-goers may come to vastly different interpretations.
I think The Wailing is a film that has one of the greatest levels of intellectual substance. It's a film that you can think about for weeks and months or even years and you can still find out new things about it. You can discuss it and length and can have passionate disagreements or constructive exchanges. The discourse may make you see new things in the film, or it may make you understand better the ways in which you think and analyze versus the way other people think and analyze, and you might even ponder as to how your analysis method is shaped and how it came to differ from the other person's analysis method. You may learn lessons in the film that you will carry throughout your life.
All this may make you think that I prefer films with intellectual substance over popcorn flicks. This is not the case. I think it's important to have a balance. Sometimes you want to watch a film just for the temporaneous thrill seeking or transitory voyeuristic pleasure.
I think that A Quiet Place offers the latter. It does its job effectively, in my view.
There is some messaging like messaging about traditional roles of males vs. females in the family. But, that's fairly shallow and it's not really the point of the film. The film would not be substantially better or worse without this aspect.
Reply by Renovatio
on April 19, 2018 at 9:03 AM
Yeah... I agree with your characterisation...
I think what makes A Quiet Place better than the average horror flick is that it has heart... Not sentimentality, but you feel elevated as the movie goes againt the nihilistic trend in many movies and instead values the human spirit... It's a nice change... adds variety..
As to the traditonal family roles, i think it was handled with nuance and showed their utility to survival in a world where society has dissapeared...
Reply by Renovatio
on April 26, 2018 at 4:02 PM
Well... A movie about the anxiety, fear and responsibility of parenthood as well as the moral decision to bring another life into an uncertain world is going to deal with it's fair share of traditional roles...
I think we're so used to adolescent themed horror movies that many people are failing to recognise what this movie is about... It's not about the kind of existential thinking that teenagers are consumed with as they enter the adult world... The movie is largly free from that kind of thing... The movie is adult centric, even the child characters are viewed from the parent's perspective... There are no scenes of childlike wonder here, just the anxiety of helicopter parents afraid of failing to protect their young...
So the ideas about family, parenting, how we raise our young, procreation and survival and our fears about the same are explored through action, rather than having an intellectual discussion about our existence...
While the movie does have the sacrificial dad trope, it showed a fuller range of what it is to be a man and a father than what we usually see, i.e. sad guy with weapon who dies for us...
I think it's novel these days... The aliens were almost incidental to the main themes of the movie...
As an aside, I was called an "SJW" on another site for, get this, criticising The Last Jedi and StarWars fans... 😂 ... I don't know what kind of mental gymnastics is involved to get to that conclusion...
Reply by Geff
on April 27, 2018 at 4:27 AM
Good analysis. Although the themes are still fairly shallow and surface level for my tastes.
They could have done more with the silence theme. Making it's not only a concrete silence, but an abstract silence causing discontent in particular between the mother and father. Instead they chose to present a fairly happy family without much in the way of problems.
The relationship between the father and daughter was also not that well presented. They could have focused on it more. There could have been something interesting there, but the pacing and lack of focus threw it off.
The daughter's guilt and the father's inability to properly communicate that he doesn't blame her was presented only in very short mini scenes. Maybe if the film were a little longer with a few added scenes or if there were longer scenes to flesh out this conflict, it could have added more to the film.
Too much of the screen time is taken up by voyeuristic action-horror.
Maybe I'm just being overly nitpicky. I think it was an okay movie. Just very forgettable, unlike Annihilation, for instance.
Regarding the SJW question. Is this all that millennials can focus on. Putting nonsensical titles on things and title slinging all day. This is the level of discourse that is to be anticipated from a population increasingly obsessed with fetishistic consumerist culture. I don't blame them. Late stage capitalism created this atmosphere.
There used to be a time when young people would spend their free time in the library instead of hanging out at the mall looking at shiney things. Ofcourse this is what the industrialists want you to do.
Reply by Fergoose
on November 11, 2020 at 6:01 PM
Pretty much agree with the OP. The film strives for consistency in its universe, has a bunch of nice touches and solid acting. Plus there was definite (and successful) humour in going into labour at the precise time you had to be more silent than ever.
I'm surprised at the general lack of comment about how deeply underwhelming the aliens were and the lack of menace they conveyed (and not just due to overexposure). For what appears to be attempting to be a horror film I found little horror, never mind social commentary or anything else that might have elevated it. Show me an alien that repeatedly snarls for no apparent reason and I'll show you an alien that hasn't been designed by a master.
Should we care that it didn't try fo explore deeper themes? I don't think so and I don't think this film represents social decline because it wanted to keep things at 90mins and simple. Some of the best popcorn flicks can be the equal of a tale with depth. The utterly mindless Duel springs to mind.
Anyhoo, a very encouraging 7/10 from me.
Reply by Fergoose
on November 12, 2020 at 4:21 AM
Fair enough, the only menacing time for me with these aliens was when one went under water.
spoilers None of the deaths were a result of the baby, but finding the way to defeat the baby was the result of the baby.
1) first kid dies before baby is born. 2) alien enters house for first time because mother stands on a nail (nothing to do with baby) 3) father dies saving his two eldest kids who had messed up, (nothing to do with the baby). 4) alien enters house for second time in part due to baby, forcing family to stay in the room with the microphone and speakers. Baby noises makes daughter and mother find the solution to slaying the alien and intentionally luring the rest of them to the house to kill them in the same manner.
So we can argue that the baby saved humanity and the overriding message is "don't keep it in your trousers" in post apocalyptic settings.
Reply by Fergoose
on November 13, 2020 at 12:18 PM
Yes, for it is a medical truth that nobody could stand on a nail unless they were pregnant.
Reply by Alfred
on June 7, 2021 at 9:53 PM
Better than the average horror flick? Not at all, this stupid pile of garbage goes all the way at the bottom.