The Dark Year: A Quiet Place

2018, John Krasinski (The Hollars) -- Netflix

Because we never have enough projects in this Blog, I am creating one of my own, wherein I indulge my desire to rewatch a movie (because sometimes a rewatch is easier than absorbing a new movie) but also fill in a blank left by the Great Hiatus of 2018. It will be more interesting to me to see what I will be willing to rewatch, than see what I missed writing about.

This was pre-pandemic, pre John Krasinski providing us a much needed "Some Good News". Instead he provides the world some really bad news in the form of monsters. IIRC this was the first of a handful of "mysterious monsters end the world" movies, most recent being Arcadian. Others included The Silence and ...Bird Box, also eaten by the Great Hiatus. I can guess there were a few more riding the coattails but I didn't see them.

Also, we watch a LOT of "monster" tagged movies.

It begins "in media res" on Day 89. A family is surviving together on a rural farm with three children. The daughter (Millicent Simmons, Wonderstruck) is deaf, the oldest son (Noah Jupe, Ford v Ferrari) is ill (do we ever learn what his condition is?) and their youngest is just a toddler. They all know to stay quiet, for even the slightest sound will draw ... the creatures. But toddlers only know their next sensation and a battery operated toy proves his doom. 

When it picks up almost a year later the family is still dealing with the loss, but they have survived. Everyone but the oldest son blames themselves to some degree. But they are trying to move on, and mom (Emily Blunt, The Girl on the Train) is even pregnant again, and preparing herself for rearing a crying baby by devising a box, lined with padding, and hidden under a further padded place in the barn, provided air by bottle. I am not even sure the family is named, despite having credits, but what does it matter, there is only The Family and the ever present silence.

Krasinski excels with the small moments & elements of this movie. Even the way he holds his finger to his bearded face to shush a despondent old man in the woods is so very very ... tangible. The soft sand they have poured in paths around the farm and out to their common destinations, for example the path leading to the nearby town, provides a quieted path. The steps of their old house is painted with the places where boards will not creak. They even have a place where the deafening roar of a waterfall allows them to utter without fear, a single place of safety. 

The rest of the movie is just tension. Being a movie of silence, music is all but absent, and we the viewer are probably holding our breaths as much as the characters. The opening act established that anyone can perish, no character is safe. And when we are provided a possible weapon against the creatures, perhaps we can even breathe a sigh of relief.

I found myself asking the same questions I did the first time round: what's up with the rest of the world, even what is up in the rest of the landscape they live in? We do see signs there are other survivors, in the lighting of fires atop high places, but there is no way the rest of the world just went ... quiet. We see the monsters are vulnerable, just well armoured. Armies would have been able to fight them. Someone must have.

The second movie doesn't answer any questions and the third is a Day One. I wonder if it will provide any hint as to the future.