You’re Alive, But Are You Living? — The Lesson ‘A Quiet Place’ Can Teach Us
It was springtime in 2018, a little more than a year into Donald Trump’s presidency. With the rising rates of hate crimes and the vitriolic rhetoric being thrown to the masses from the White House, many were on edge. We were becoming increasingly aware of just how fragile democracy was, yet we continued living our lives as best we could, sometimes looking for ways to forget that the threat of fascism was just underneath our noses. It should be no surprise that A Quiet Place resonated with many of us.
The film follows a family of five as they navigate a post-apocalyptic world that has been taken over by terrifying monsters almost reminiscent of the giant mutant spider-like beings of Cloverfield (2008). Unlike the outright threat we see in said film, however, the monsters in A Quiet Place are mostly unseen; hunting silently out of sight until one makes the mistake of creating any noise above that of a whisper to attract their attention. It is in this way that the youngest in the family, Beau (Cade Woodward), loses his life when he turns on a noisy toy in the woods as the family cautiously travels back from a trip into town to gather essential supplies on a path of sand. This is the introduction of the film. The audience is then launched forward over a year later where we see the matriarch of the family, Evelyn (Emily Blunt), now heavily pregnant. From here, the film follows the family as the father, Lee (John Krasinski), and his two remaining children, Regan and Marcus (Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe), do what they can to ensure at least some possibility that they can safely welcome the new addition to their family and raise him in this new silent world.
One of the most unique aspects of this film is that most of the dialogue is done through sign language. Sign language is something many hearing people do not need to learn and often do not. Regan’s deafness, however, offers her family an advantage, as they all speak this language fluently which gives them the ability to communicate with one another in a way most cannot. Unfortunately, the world as a whole, especially the United States, leaves much to be desired in regards to providing our disabled communities with proper acknowledgement and accommodations. And during his presidential run in late 2015, Trump was caught on camera mocking reporter Serge Kovaleski at a rally in South Carolina. The soon-to-be president was shown hooking his arms and giving an awful imitation of the reporter’s arthrogryposis. In a climate where such behavior comes from those in positions of power and remains unpunished, the creative choice to make sign language a strength should be properly applauded.
Along with communicating with one another, the family creates ways to continue on with their lives. They eat their meals with their hands off of leaves of lettuce instead of using plates and silverware. They play board games with small fuzz balls and knitted tokens instead of the regular game pieces. They are surviving, but without the ability to venture beyond the sand path, are they really living?
The same questions could be asked of the marginalized communities of the world. When the world lacks the ability to see us as people, we can survive. We’ve done so for a long time. But are we really living when odds are constantly stacked against us? Are we really living when the people who hate us are growing in numbers due to said hate being normalized?
Many of us enjoyed this film without really considering why, but its release came a whole two years before the Covid-19 pandemic that forced us to remain indoors for over a year as we waited for a vaccine to become available to us. Its sequel, A Quiet Place: Part II (2020), was delayed a year due to theaters being closed during the lock down. Ironically, the sequel feels more relevant to this new world we are living in due to Covid-19 than the world we lived in before. It begins on the day the monsters appeared. Everything is normal. The town is abuzz. Marcus is participating in a baseball game as his family watches from the bleachers and cheers him on. We also meet Emmett (Cillian Murphy), a friend of the family’s. He’s there to support his own children, but as his radio begins to act up, debris is seen falling from the sky. Everyone decides it’s time to go home, and it’s the last we see of Emmett for the time being. Before anyone can leave town, however, the monsters attack. The once secure community is now changed forever. From here, we are taken to where the last film ends — after the death of Lee and the birth of the new baby boy.
The pandemic challenged the perceptions many of us had about getting sick. Yes, there was always an underlying fear within many of us that we could one day develop some sort of life-threatening disease. Some of us even feared we would not be able to take care of ourselves with such a messy healthcare system in the US. However, most of us did not expect a virus to come on so suddenly and change everything in a matter of a couple of months into the new year. Fortunately, like A Quiet Place, 2020 ended on a few hopeful notes. Joe Biden won the election against Trump and the Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson vaccines were set to roll out at the beginning of 2021. With all this in mind, however, it’s important not to get too comfortable. A Quiet Place: Part II illustrates this perfectly.
The hope given to us at the end of the first installment comes after the death of Lee and the birth of the new baby. The family discovers that Regan’s hearing aid can produce a high pitched noise that makes the monsters vulnerable. With the help of this device originally meant to aid the hearing impaired, Evelyn is able to shoot and kill an attacking monster when his head expands as a response to the noise and exposes the sensitive flesh beneath the armor. The movie closes with more monsters seen on surveillance ambushing their home. Evelyn smirks and reloads the gun.
It could have been so easy to leave it at that for the audience. It could have been so easy to leave us to believe this family had it figured out and that everything would be okay. But just like in real life, hope is not an end to our problems. Hope simply provides possibilities for better days, and in order to reach better days, we have to put in the work. Even with hope, many threats that plague us remain.
Emmett is seen later in the sequel when the family journeys to the world outside their path of sand after their home is destroyed due to the events of the last film. Emmett rescues the family when he sees them running from the monsters outside of the abandoned foundry that he has made his own home. His appearance is disheveled and stressed — A far cry from the clean shaven man casually sitting on the bleachers with his radio at the beginning of the film. He has lost his wife and children and he has lost faith in humanity. He could easily serve as a parallel to some of the families of the 173 million people worldwide who lost their lives to Covid-19, especially in the US alone where 597,000 people lost their lives.
And who could blame Emmett for not being hopeful when the family arrives? They came with an advantage, a speaker and Regan’s hearing aid, but the monsters are still there and they’re still outnumbered. This is not much different than the current world outside of fiction. We have vaccines, but Covid-19 hasn’t gone anywhere. Some of us now have immunity thanks to the vaccines, but shortages in countries like India are causing more people to die. And in the film, it is suggested that during Emmett’s time off screen he has seen the worst of humanity (and we see the worst of humanity later in the film as well). He warns Evelyn about finding other survivors when he says the people left “aren’t worth saving.” Some might argue that the whole world saw some of the worst parts of humanity during the January 6th insurrection of the US Capitol. A vaccine didn’t make our problems go away. Trump losing reelection didn’t make our problems go away. They’re still here and there’s still work to be done, and some of us have lost morale after a very traumatic year. But much like its predecessor, the sequel offers hope. Regan knows she can save everyone if they would just trust her to do the right thing. She knows Emmett can help her because she sees his worth even after he’s lost everything and can’t see it himself.
Many people shy away from the horror genre due to either being scared or being unable to suspend disbelief, but the stories often have lessons to teach us, and sometimes, those lessons are hopeful. Horror stories are often not much more terrifying than the threats we face on a regular basis outside of fiction, and sometimes, we might be able to even see ourselves in them. Both A Quiet Place and its sequel might be terrifying to watch for some moviegoers, but that doesn’t mean there’s no value in the lessons they have to teach us: It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to lose faith sometimes. It’s okay to have hope. But hope alone won’t help us. We have to work together if we want to reach the place that hope promises, otherwise, we’ll be stuck in place surviving instead of living.
