A Quiet Place: Aw, C'mon!

Pile it on!

Sometimes I skip to the end of a book or movie to see if it's going to be worth my time to eXperience the whole thing.

But some people say, “How can you enjoy a fictional work if you know the ending?”  Simple.  I've always been interested in writing fiction – never been published – and along the way I've learned how a work is constructed.  I can enjoy fiction on another level, seeing how well it was put together.

The film A Quiet Place had a great premise: blind aliens have invaded our planet and they can only detect human victims through sound.  Make a noise and you're dead.

I did notice that these carnivorous critters with their blindness can run around all over, at one point panically racing away in a beeline, without slamming into trees or and other objects.   They even don't even slip on something like Little Johnny's damn skateboard left in the driveway or one of Curt Collins' banana peels.  But let's leave that aside.

I watched about the first third of the movie then skipped to the ending.  OK, the ending works.  So then I watch the middle part.  Uh-oh.

I hate crisis clustering, everything happening at once to all the characters.  It's just unbelievable that most characters survive three or four threats at the same time.  The kids are missing.  Their father is searches for them, monsters prowling the cornfields.  Unfortunately Lassie isn't around to tell him the poor kids fell into a grain silo, trapped.  (With all that annoying barking Lassie produced she was probably one of the first ones to become a monster meal.)  Meanwhile back at the ranch mother and baby are being stalked by a hungry space critter.  And wombats are rampaging across Wisconsin!

This is compound melodrama, putting the characters in such impossible situations, threats in all directions.   Save the kids, save the mom, and get those freakin' wombats out of Wisconsin!

Sorry but I don't buy it.  A good story doesn't need a danger pileup to build suspense.

My place wasn't quiet as I watch the disappointing middle part.  Guffaws and scorn permeated the air.  Technically a well made movie, good acting and direction, but the distended middle didn't work.