It's Oh So Quiet [Review: A Quiet Place]

It is the post-apocalypse. We know this because the streets are deserted, the traffic lights have fallen over, and three children are raiding a supermarket and their parents are encouraging them. Encouraging them silently though - the family communicate in sign language and are taking care to stop any loud noises. Why? The family leave the shop without incident but an incident on their walk home explains everything you need to know about the threat facing humanity from the new rulers of Earth: vicious predatory creatures that are blind but respond in an instant to any loud sound.


A Quiet Place is not your typical Michael Bay film. It's quiet! And short! This is a low-key creature horror focusing almost entirely on the fate of one family in their farm hideaway. Their quest is not to unite the people of Earth and take back our world, although Lee (John Krasinski) is obsessed with finding the aliens' weakness, but simply to survive and protect each other. Keeping everyone silent is hard enough when your family includes an anxious child and a frustrated teenager, and you've all been through a traumatic tragedy already - and all of this pales into insignificance when Evelyn (Emily Blunt) discovers she is pregnant. The film remains true to this focus and even when the family come face to face with the creatures, it avoids any temptation to build into massive action-movie set pieces. There's almost no exposition - the scenario tells its' own story. And there isn't too much lens flare. The main use of overt CGI is the creatures themselves, and they are a particularly nasty bunch.

The concept of A Quiet Place, perhaps the cleverest horror movie concept I've come across for some time, reminded me of Day Of The Triffids, another post-apocalyptic scenario where humanity is robbed of its advantage over the creatures, in that case by being blinded. This is also the second mainstream movie in the past year to feature prominent use of sign language as a major plot point, following in the very quiet footsteps of The Shape Of Water.

Stop Commotion

I've started work on my second ever stop motion project. The first, an adaptation of the Day Of The Triffids, was made at the age of about 10 with some good friends, a VHS camcorder the size of a bungalow or small house, and seven or eight houseplants. I have no idea what happened to the VHS cassette afterwards, although a recent BBC production did seem strangely familiar...*

This new project does not feature either houseplants or VHS. As usual I'm learning as I go: many of the difficulties of live action filmmaking apply to stop motion too. On the other hand, if you're struggling to find that perfect camera angle on a confined set, you can always demolish a wall. For some reason this is frowned upon on location in the real world.

*this comment flagged for irony moderation.

Trick or Triffid?

Day of the Triffids, Episode 2, the ending: I wish to enquire - WTF? More on that story later. For now, thank goodness the BBC didn't fall into the trap of giving us an ending that made Any Sense Whatsoever. Whoever you are, wherever you are, this is Sci-Fi Gene broadcasting for Radio Britain, happy if somewhat perplexed.

Feed me, Seymour! [First impressions: Day of the Triffids]

I've just seen the first half of the BBC's new Day of the Triffids drama starring Dougray Scott, Joely Richardson and Eddie Izzard. The tone is serious - there's very little Doctor Who-style playfulness although I loved the TRIFFOIL petrol stations.

I am struck by how assured and confident a production this is. The first of the two feature length episodes is easily of feature quality - in particular the portrayal of post-apocalyptic London and some plot elements bring to mind 28 Days Later and Children of Men, and this episode could certainly stand alongside both films.

Eddie Izzard stars as Torrence, who enters the plot by escaping from a diving plane - his method of survival has a lot of flair and defines Torrence as a character even though they may possibly have nuked the 'fridge to some extent.

Everything's cool: from the colourful and dynamic scene lighting, to an audacious screenplay, to the acting, to the edit particularly in terms of pacing - those 90 minutes flew by. Large scale set pieces - aeroplanes crashing, anarchy on the streets or in the wards, massed Triffid attacks - are accomplished smoothly. It's a marker for just how far the BBC has come in recent years, and is a far cry from the "good old days" when I would watch old episodes of Doctor Who and love them despite the dodgy production values. Looking forward to the concluding episode tomorrow.