A Glass Half Full

Rating: 5/10 (16 February 2019)

This movie is about a family surviving in a post-apocalyptic world where making too much noise means death. We don't know how much noise is too much noise, as the film does a good job of breaking its own rules, but I'm not here to point out the many contradictions. I'd like to address this movie head-on: what is it about?
The story is as old as time. Parents doing the best they can for their family, and children making it hard as they learn their way in the world. But there really isn't much else to this movie. Without a dialogue, the silence becomes interminable rather than contemplative. Their struggles are banal and thoughtless.
I suspect that John Krasinski wanted to create a quiet, reflective piece. Camera shots meant to make you muse about their surroundings feel a bit like foreplay that doesn't quiet get there. Maybe the biggest theme of the movie is the question of what it means to bring children into the big, bad world. This place is the realisation of the oft-heard comment, "I just don't know if I could bring a child into this world, with the way it is today." If we think about the world as having a whole bunch of abstract badness like global warming and a dearth of political integrity, then A Quiet Place has literal badness that really makes the world a horrible place.
And here is where I think Krasinski missed a golden opportunity to examine the cult of parenthood. Instead of considering this question, the parents just go ahead and have a baby... in a world where you can't make much noise. I'm disappointed that he failed to ask questions like, "At what point do we consider parents to be selfish rather than selfless?"
A Quiet Place should've been a movie with something to think about. Instead, it goes through the motions of movie-making without any of the backbone that makes you think it was cool, or interesting, or thoughtful, or anything really. It was just a little bit empty.