A Stupid Place

Rating: 3/10 (20 January 2019)

So, you've been feeling too cozy and relaxed lately, and you want a horror/thriller movie to spice up your life a bit? Then look no further, because A Quiet Place will definitely make you experience a solid spike of emotions. However, these might not be emotions you actually expected...
I've watched hundreds of movies through all my life, but this film is literally the first one I rage quit halfway through. No, it's not the monsters with extra sensitive hearing that make me mad - it's the stupidity of people who try to survive those monsters and who you're supposed to root for.
From the very first scene of the film, where a bunch of kids, including a 4-year old, run around a deserted pharmacy in the not-so-distant post-apocalyptic future, A Quiet Place goes head over heels with bizarre idiocy of the characters, as if to compensate for the lack of its sonic diversity. We can't be scared with the generic spooky music - so let us be constantly strained by the way characters act. Parents not watching over their kids way too young to comprehend the gravity of the situation, kids more grown-up acting as if they don't know what death is and haven't seen it with their own eyes, and both kids and adults behaving as if they were Wet bandits from Home Alone with a death wish for wits.
I hoped that the first death (basically shown to us in the trailer) would change something - so that the characters would become less idiotic and more self-aware. But no, the degree of moronity only keeps going higher - as if the only person who's actually interested in surviving this grotesque nightmare is the husband (aka the director). Well, maybe he was the only one who actually read the script, so go figure...
My honest guess is that the Hollywood got so engrossed with the cash cow the family values theme is, the movie bosses decided it's enough just to show the adolescent people doing dangerous things to make the audience drool in an overprotective parental ecstasy, willingly closing their eyes on the nonexistence of the plot, incoherence of the characters and a totally emotionally manipulative nature of the whole premise. If there weren't any non-adults involved, most of us would just scoff and approve the stupid deaths of the stupid people (because "every stupid person dead helps the smart guys remain alive"). Here, however, we're expected to feel involved and worried and sympathetic - simply because there are kids on stage.
A hundred years ago, a child exploitation was when infants were forced to work at factories - and the first world countries worked hard to abolish such slavery. Only to end up with this kind of exploitation - maybe less damaging, but definitely no less ugly.