In A Quiet Place, survival depends on not saying anything.
The 2018 film and its 2020 sequel are built on a simple premise:
Aliens have invaded Earth, killing anything that makes a sound.
It’s a story that’s told with next to no dialogue,
but viewers seemed to hear a message anyway:
According to some critics, the film is actually a political allegory
for a culture where people feel they’ll be
pounced on for saying what they really think.
A Quiet Place saw a backlash from liberals who saw
a right-wing commentary in this parallel to complaints of PC Culture,
as well as in the film’s romanticized
portrayal of the mythic American family;
meanwhile, the film was championed
by some conservative voices for the same reasons.
But this loaded debate around A Quiet Place
came as a surprise to its star and director John Krasinski,
who said he never intended to tell a political story.
Since their inception, horror films have been
seen as inherently political.
They prey on the fears that lurk
just beneath the surface of society.
They turn our anxieties into literal monsters.
And in the end, the real terror
almost always turns out to be us.
“They pick the most dangerous enemy
they can find… and it’s themselves.”
In A Quiet Place Part II, the story’s central family
ventures out into a damaged community-at-large.
And the second installment comes across as a parable
for today’s contentious and divided climate,
in which both sides paint the other as the enemy.
“The people that are left.
They’re not the kind
of people worth saving.”
But how did A Quiet Place end up becoming
an ideological litmus test in the first place?
Here’s our take on A Quiet Place’s unexpected political controversy,
and why some viewers seem to have heard a message
loud and clear, even in the silence.
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“You’re safe.
They can’t hear us.”
In one respect, A Quiet Place
presents the Abbott family’s quiet life
as an almost idyllic state— a meditative, monastic retreat
from the horror that surrounds them.
It’s one that anyone who is exhausted by the din of 24-hour news
and social media chatter might find appealing.
“Kanye was just on TMZ and he said slavery was a choice!”
“Noooo!”
But because this silence is being forced upon them,
some interpret this as suppression.
The Abbotts live in constant fear
of being attacked just for speaking out
—or for making any noise at all.
“Small sounds safe.”
“Big sounds not safe.”
It’s a complaint that’s become a familiar refrain from those
who believe the world has become too politically correct—
too full of “social justice warriors” who are ready to pounce
at the first disagreeable sound.
“So what they do is they use identity to try
and silence anyone else from saying anything.
You’re not allowed to say that because of who I am.”
Brian Raven Ehrenpreis wrote at Medium,
“A Quiet Place is interested above all else in exploring
the ways in which white conservatives today are being silenced.”
And Clark Whelton, at the conservative City Journal,
agreed, calling it “an allegorical retelling
of the conquest of Western society
by enforcers of political correctness.”
With the Abbotts’ simple, virtuous, and distinctly all American way of life
under constant threat from these outsiders,
who even rob them of their freedom of speech
the film has been read by both liberal and conservative critics
as a story about white victimhood.
The New Yorker’s Richard Brody pointed out that, when two characters
—who are both white men— commit suicide
by making enough noise to draw the monsters to them,
“they do so by howling as if with rage” the wordless equivalent of --
“I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
At the same time, the feeling of not being able to speak freely
doesn’t exist only for people on the right.
Liberals may also feel stifled by the right’s equivalent
to political correctness-- “patriotic correctness”
which likewise dictates what’s not allowed to be said.
“First member of congress to describe terrorists
who killed thousands of people on 9/11
as ‘some people who did something.’
Unbelievable.”
When A Quiet Place first found its way to John Krasinski,
he connected to the parenting themes at the heart of the story.
“When I got the original script, we had just had our daughter
three weeks before.
I was scared to keep her safe,
scared to keep her alive and all these things are in this movie.”
As he would later elaborate to The Hollywood Reporter,
“This is a movie about family.
It's a metaphor about what family is
and the extremes you go to as a parent to protect your kids.”
“Who are we if we can’t protect them?
Who are we?”
A Quiet Place’s focus on a single family
doesn’t sound political on the surface,
but in fact the idea of the American family
is at the center of all our nation’s ideological debates.
“That would want to tear down the very foundation,
the family unit, that holds America together.”
Sharing familiar concepts and imagery with other movies about alien invasions
or worlds transformed into ghost towns by contagions or zombies,
at its root A Quiet Place taps into the universal fear of invasion—
of having the sanctity of home violated by intruders.
Holed up in their farmhouse, a merciless threat lurking
just outside their door, the Abbotts’ situation
harkens back to the days of pioneers living in the untamed west,
fearing attack from Native American tribes.
It’s a story that is steeped in foundational American myth.
“And you’ll creep along this, very quietly, like a—”
“Like a little mouse.”
“Hurry up, Martha!
The moon’s fixin’ to rise!
“Oh, you won’t make a sound
or come back no matter what you hear?”
In his article, “The Silently Regressive Politics of A Quiet Place,”
New Yorker critic Richard Brody derided what he called this
“survivalist horror-fantasy”— a depiction of the home as a fortress,
to be secured at all costs.
The Economist’s Nicholas Barber
took it even further, saying that the film’s depiction
of one, well-armed farmer fending off an entire alien threat fulfills
“one of the fondest fantasies of Second Amendment obsessives.”
Both argued that the film plays directly into the paranoia
that fuels so much of gun culture, as well as the old-fashioned
idealization of the “good guy with a gun.”
"The only thing that's gonna stop
a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
A Quiet Place is immersed in a nostalgic vision of early
American life that’s so often romanticized by conservatives.
“The American Nation was carved out of the vast frontier
by the toughest, strongest, fiercest and most determined
men and women to ever walk on the face of the earth.”
The Abbott family has even fallen back
into conventional, patriarchal roles.
The men do the hunting and fishing while the women tend to the cooking
the chores, and child-rearing.
The men are the protectors,
and the women rely on them to be protected.
“He just wants you to learn to take care of yourself.
So you can take care of me when I’m old and grey.”
In this old-fashioned tableau of Americana,
we see familiar patriotic icons that have been symbolically
shelved or stalled.
The Abbotts’ old-fashioned, rural life is a reminder
of an American dream that’s been deferred—
destroyed by a threat that could stand in
for any number of existential fears that the country faces.
Those threats have also been read as moral ones.
Some see a not-so-subtle endorsement of pro-life values
in the Abbotts’ decision to have another baby,
knowing full well that its existence would imperil their own
and endanger their existing kids.
In The Washington Post,
columnist Sonny Bunch hailed the film as
“pro-life in the sense that it is pro-living life”
—arguing that the Abbotts’ choice underscores the idea
that life without family is no life at all.
“I could have carried him…
I should have carried him”
Catholic Bishop Robert Barron even deemed A Quiet Place
“the most unexpectedly religious film of the year.”
for its pro-life messages, its depiction of faith,
and ultimately, for the father’s Christ-like
act of self-sacrifice to save his children.
Still, there are elements of A Quiet Place that could
actually be read as progressive.
In the end it’s the mother
and the daughter who emerge as the film’s true heroes.
While Evelyn says she needs men to take care of her,
time and again we see how strong and resourceful she is
how capable and tough.
So A Quiet Place really shows us that some of these surface
old-fashioned family values are just a delusion.
In the end, it is Evelyn who becomes her family’s protector.
“She’s just trying to keep everybody alive”
Meanwhile, the monsters’ weakness is figured out by Regan,
the Abbotts’ hearing- impaired daughter
who’s played by real-life deaf actress Millicent Simmonds.
“I hope this inspires writers and directors
to make more stories that include deaf people.
All kinds of disabled people, I think,
need to be included in these stories”
This young person, who represents
a traditionally marginalized group,
uses feedback from her hearing aid to fight the monsters.
So she embodies the importance of embracing
what’s different about you and unlocking potential
in places that people tend to overlook.
One of the big reasons the Abbotts have been able to survive at all
is presumably because -- unlike most families --
they can communicate with each other via sign language.
And the tide finally turns when Regan steps up to the mic,
symbolically amplifying her signal.
Because the film can be read
either way, some— like Vox critic Aja Romano—
have suggested that film is largely apolitical—
that it resonates most with “a beleaguered and battered public,
tired of fighting with each other, evading harassment from members
of the opposite side of the political spectrum.”
The Abbotts, Romano says, are
“a nuclear family growing and becoming closer
as a result of crisis, instead of being driven further apart.”
This theme finds its greatest expression
in the relationship between Lee and Regan,
whose inability to communicate
“I won’t make a sound!”
“Just.
Don’t.”
creates misunderstanding and tension.
“You still love her, right?”
“Of course I do.”
“You should tell her.”
Their situation reflects a world that feels
more and more ideologically divided,
Romano notes, but it also offers a reminder that we find
our greatest strength in loving one another.
“I have always loved you.”
This kind of unity seems achievable within a family,
but in A Quiet Place Part II, the Abbotts, now led by a single mom,
are confronted with the vicious
outside world of hardened survivors.
“The idea of this family dealing with their safety net
taken away from them…
They are forced to go out
in the world and see how other people live.”
As Emily Blunt told Entertainment Weekly,
the sequel is about “how far would you go
to extend your hand to your neighbor?”
She added that the film is dealing with
“that fractured sense of community
that we’re probably feeling on quite a global scale now.”
“There’s nothing left.”
“Please.”
Naturally, that community that the Abbott family discovers
is as divided as our own—
and there is plenty to fear from The Other.
“There are people out there worth saving…
“You don’t know, do you?”
Of course, exactly who those scary people are,
and what sort of threats they represent,
once again comes down to your own political interpretation.
“Every step is much more treacherous.”
“You know they’re not safe.”
So how did so many come away convinced of a subtextual
political agenda Krasinski swears wasn’t there?
Much of this reading has to do with context—
our perception not only of the filmmaker’s intent,
but of the real world just outside the frame.
“You know, the truth is I don’t think my name
is a name that you would think,
oh that guy’s gonna go direct a horror movie.”
Long before A Quiet Place, John Krasinski became famous
as The Office’s Jim Halpert.
Jim is a quintessential everyman,
the smirking voice of reason amid so much cartoonish chaos.
He’s a nice guy who longs for something better,
unfailingly loyal to those he loves.
And because we know so little about Krasinki’s character
in A Quiet Place, the film relies greatly
on this built-inaffection viewers already have for him.
But in more recent years, Krasinski has sought to toughen his image.
“Comedy is what you do.
You do it great.”
“Uh, in the first segment, you said you loved A Quiet Place”.
“I did.
I saw it twice.
I laughed my ass off.”
His movie roles have increasingly molded
his trademark boy-next-door charm and all-American wholesomeness
into something decidedly more rugged and aggressive.
The first hint of this transformation came in the 2016 film 13 Hours.
“I want the car!”
“No, I’m not gonna do that.”
For Michael Bay’s dramatization of the attacks
on American ambassadors in Benghazi, Krasinski grew a manly beard
and packed on 25 pounds of muscle
to convincingly play a former Navy SEAL.
A few years earlier in 2011, he had actually screen-tested
for Captain America.
“All of a sudden Chris Hemsworth walked by as Thor
and he’s like ‘Hey mate.’
And I went, ‘I’m good.
This is stupid.
I’m not Captain America.
It’s fine.”
While he didn’t get the part, the fact he was even considered
spoke to Krasinski’s action hero aspirations.
Then came Jack Ryan.
Krasinski assumed the role
of Tom Clancy’s super spy in 2018,
only a few months after A Quiet Place debuted.
“I’m an analyst!
I don’t interrogate people,
I write reports!”
Like Jim Halpert crossed with 24’s Jack Bauer,
this Jack Ryan in an everyman taken to an action hero extreme
"I'm an analyst."
"What does that mean?"
Many have found it’s a series that turns intelligence work
into thrilling TV.
But the Amazon series,
like 13 Hours, has also been criticized
for a simplistic, jingoistic portrayal of American interventionism.
Some have even called it outright propaganda.
Krasinski didn’t see these projects as political either.
Talking to The Daily Beast about 13 Hours, he said--
“The truth is, we should all be proud of these guys,
and the moment you politicize it, the more you’re moving us toward
a world that I don’t want to be living in;
a world where people want to score political points at all costs.”
He took a similar tack toward the CIA.
“The CIA is something that we should all not only cherish,
but be saying thank you for every single day”
But while he tried to remain apolitical,
a perception that Krasinski was becoming the face
of red-blooded conservative ideals began to take hold.
In 2018, Buzzfeed’s Alison Willmore dubbed Krasinski a “red state hero,”
writing that his new, action-movie persona
was just an evolution of the “nice guy” image
Krasinski had honed on The Office.
Jim’s sensitivity is still there, she writes—
“it’s just been transmuted into anxiety—
specifically, a white male anxiety about protecting what one has.”
That anxiety has been a dominant cultural theme
ever since the 2016 election of Donald Trump,
who has repeatedly stoked fears among white, middle class Americans
that their lives are being threatened
by The Other— whatever form that takes.
“They’re bringing drugs.
They’re bringing crime.
They’re rapists.
And some, I assume, are good people.”
As Vox’s Aja Romano noted, A Quiet Place is
“the first major post-apocalypse film drawn entirely in the Trump era.”
It’s an age of unease that’s been a boon to the horror genre
inspiring movies that play on many of the latent problems
that Trump’s presidency has brought to the surface:
problems like toxic masculinity, wealth inequality, class warfare,
and racism.
“By the way, I would have voted
for Obama for a third term, if I could.”
This has created a wave of films that have been popularly termed
“social thrillers” by one of their most prominent voices,
director Jordan Peele, who has popularized the form
with his films Get Out and Us.
“I call it a social thriller… inspired by Stepford Wives
and Rosemary’s Baby, these movies that are creepy,
but humanity is the creepiest part, at the center of it.”
So in light of all this, it’s easy to see why
so many would interpret A Quiet Place --
released amid this wave of social thrillers,
and starring America’s favorite everyman turned “red state hero” --
as another political statement… even if that’s decidedly not
what its creators had in mind.
Ultimately, the rather noisy debate
around the nature of A Quiet Place’s silence demonstrates the limits
of how much a creator’s intention matters.
In the end, it’s what the audience takes from a piece of art
that dominates its public narrative and what it means to people.
"But isn't the point of art less what people put into it
and more what people get out of it?”
As A Quiet Place shows us, sometimes a film’s perceived message
depends more on who’s listening, than what it’s actually saying.
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