I really wanted to like A Quiet Place.  It has a wonderful science-fictional premise and using silence as an ever-present necessity is brilliant.  Then why was I so frustrated and disappointed with the film?  Let me explain.

John Krasinski’s film shows how one Iowa farm family in particular is trying to survive even while extraterrestrial monsters are roaming the countryside.  The monsters are blind but hunt by sound, so the people must remain silent no matter what they are doing.  Lee Abbott (John Krasinski) and his wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt) have three children at the beginning of the story, and another on the way later.  Meanwhile, the monsters must be getting hungrier.

An aside: in any retail business, a feeling persists that the business would run beautifully except for one factor — the customers.  And that is the problem with this wonderful premise — the people in the story make incredibly stupid, nonsensical decisions, because that is what people do.  One would think that years of living under these circumstances the Abbott family would know better.  They certainly seem to.  Yet kids wander off, make noise, fail to follow instruction, put everyone else in danger, etc.  The same is true for the parents.  And what’s with the idea to have another baby?  Really?  Don’t they know that babies cry?  Bringing a child into such a world is like signing a death warrant on all of them.  Sure, it’s a moral conundrum, especially after the powerful opening sequence, but anyone with a lick of common sense would wait.

For every cool detail that is revealed, some character manages to foul something up just as quickly.  And then the climactic encounter occurs and a way to battle the beasts is finally found — and it is a method that would have occurred to authorities within hours, if not minutes, of the first invasion.  Honestly, I just kept shaking my head.  Yes, the film is suspenseful and effective much of the time.  I suppose this is a realistic vision of how regular people would cope with unending terror.  Yet I wish the Abbott family would have been smarter and more resourceful than they already were.  And that is even while knowing I could not have remained silent for a week in the same situation.  What a frustrating movie.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  27 April 2018.