Dumb at Its Core

Rating: 4/10 (2 September 2018)

While watching this, I found myself thinking a lot about the movie Signs. They have a lot of similarities: quiet, moody, on a farm, features children, aliens with a ridiculous weakness. And like A Quiet Place, Signs was met with large critical and audience approval when it was released. Those audiences and critics were wrong. I believe many have come around to agree with me, and the reputation of Signs has (in my estimation) declined over the years. I truly believe that the same will happen with A Quiet Place.
I really wanted to like this. A great cast and director, and an interesting horror premise. And we're in a horror renaissance to boot! Unfortunately, this struck me as silly in the end. The plot premise alone is absurd: having a child in a post-apocalypse is always questionable, but in a world where making a single sound leads to death?! Madness. And only a little over a year after the world ends too.... From the silent birth, to the baby in a goddamn box, it's too much to handle.
I think perhaps many who like A Quiet Place give it a great deal of credit for allowing real tragedy and sadness to be features, which most horror movies shy away from. And I welcome those elements. It adds depth and stakes. But you need some kind of semblance of logic and believability for that tragedy to matter. And especially lacking in such a semblance of logic is the ending:
*SPOILER*
The weakness that allows our heroes to (mostly) defeat the aliens is the deaf daughter's cochlear implant feedback, or perhaps more broadly any audio feedback. Well, that plus a shotgun.
Who would've thought that the mysterious aliens that hunt by sound would be vulnerable to a sonic weapon? No one could have discovered that except a deaf girl! No wonder the world's militaries were so easily defeated!
This movie, at its core, is dumb.