A Quiet Place is not scary or entertaining. Seeing its moderately clever premise heavily squandered may anger some who like movies to be ‘good’ or ‘not make you fall asleep’. If you enjoy characters that act intelligently in dangerous situations, go elsewhere, and, given 2018, elsewhen as well.

But ‘story’ or ‘vague interest’ was not Mr. John Krasinski’s goal. Clearly. It couldn’t be. Instead, he wanted to show us the logical terminus of Our Modern Age, a time where children decide how to raise themselves. Sure, there are aliens that have nearly wiped out humanity, and can kill you at any moment, but what really matters is that the feelings of the young will never be bruised. A staggering indictment of the philosophy ‘I’d rather die than set boundaries for my children. Wait. You’re saying they’re the ones that die? This is a win-win! I mean, I love my kids!’

There is no other explanation.

One facet of this obsession, as demonstrated more prominently in Searching, is to reassure the parents that it’s not their fault. Don’t worry! No one is to blame! Mr. Krasinski underlines this by 1) Making it so the parent’s fault and 2) having the parent whose fault it was say ”It was no one’s fault!!!!’

The parents (‘Who are we, if we can’t protect them?’) are transformed, then, according to the film, and not me interpreting the film, the film, into ‘no one’

Brilliant.

The Gaumont Rennes has stopped tearing the tickets, and instead scans them to send to the Home Office as to whether or not I’ve actually seen the film. I’m too scared to tear them myself, the only emotion the film was able to convey

In another film where making a noise means you die, you would, for example, check to see if something was actually soundproof. Or not act like comic screaming boneheads. Nay, says Mr. Krasinski! Instead, the characters, lost in the fog of ‘family’ forget all these things.

The plot, if one can indeed say a film that is really an essay has a plot, is set around Ms. Emily Blunt’s pregnancy. Unlike Fargo, where a pregnant woman is not defined by the actual birth, in this film, we know that the Woman Will Have Baby.

The audience is not inculcated in the bizarre alternate diegesis of the film; we know that giving birth is painful and that babies are noisy. We assume, and the film plays with these assumptions, and is not incompetent genre filmmaking, no, this had to be strictly intentional, have their characters – again as an attack on modern life, and in no way a subconscious expression of it – not check life-saving soundproofing, and simply plan to have a baby that doesn’t cry.

Whew!

That’s not an expression of actual earned tension, but of admiration at laying modern life bare for all to see! Whew!

The ultimate tragedy of this philosophy of child-centrism is underlined when Mr. Krasinski is seen constantly trying to contact people in other continents by radio, but not, say, check on his neighbors, clearly visible in the distance. Instead, the lights of neighbors’ homes disappear, their seeming purpose to indicate the family is alone. Never has the nuclearization of the family been so terrifyingly realized. They can’t reach out…because they don’t feel like it.

We’re in a hysterical time about children, who represent one of our most crucial identities, in the same way were about masculinity in the 1950s. We’re also in crisis about masculinity now. Huh. And also had a significant crisis about kids in the 1950s. I thought once you recognized a problem, you just fixed it, and that was that.

That could happen. But only with great essay writing.