[intro music]
Welcome to the Kill Count, where we tally up the victims in all our favorite horror movies.
I'm James A. Janisse and today we're looking at A Quiet Place
released in 2018 by director and co-writer Jim Halpert-er, John Krasinski.
Krasinski took a serious liking to the screenplay written by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods,
mostly because he had recently become a father and A Quiet Place is all about keeping your family alive.
Adding to how personal this movie became for him, Krasinski's real-life wife Emily Blunt co-stars as his in-movie wife.
So, if you've ever wanted to watch Jack Ryan and Mary Poppins raise a family in a post-apocalyptic world, this movie's for you!
The dangerous world in A Quiet Place is inhabited by monsters who will kill the hell out of you if you make any noise - thus the movie's tagline:
"If they hear you, they hunt you."
Because of this premise, A Quiet Place is a remarkably quiet movie - just look at the sound waves for the movie file in Premiere.
Now compare them to the sound waves from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which came out the same year.
Crazy right?
There are more flat lines there than a hospital with a power outtage.
It makes for an enjoyably tense viewing experience that'll leave you seriously regretting that order of nachos.
How many people end up getting killed because they just couldn't keep their mouths shut?
(whispering) Shhh! Let's find out and get to them!
[The Kills music]
The movie begins 89 days after an alien invasion that's left towns like this one completely deserted.
Amidst this silent emptiness, the Abbott family scavanges for medical supplies.
Mother Evelyn, a doctor, knows just what to get for her ailing son Marcus, although she has to be very careful not to make any noise while she's grabbing it.
Here you go, Marcus. Pills are good. Pills are goood!
The youngest child in the family is little boy Beau, and he's not as careful as his mom when it comes to being quiet.
Luckily he's got older sister Regan looking out for him and keeping everyone not-killed.
Regan is a deaf character played by actually-deaf actress Millicent Simmonds,
who helped teach the rest of the cast the American Sign Language they use throughout this movie.
As they're getting ready to leave, Beau walks up them and the rest of the family reacts like he's pointing a gun at 'em.
Turns out he's just got a noisemaking rocket ship toy that father Lee has to disable by way of removing the batteries.
Listen to your pops, kid, that toy's too loud!
As the family leaves the pharmacy, Regan tries to be a good sister and give Beau his toy back, telling him to keep that shit on the DL.
Snitches get stitches, Beau!
But unbeknownst to her, that little bastard grabs the batteries on his way out, too.
And so it's not long after this family starts heading back home, walking carefully along a sand-strewn path to keeps their footsteps quiet, that things go wrong.
It happens after we're introduced to a great feature of this film, the way it jumps between different hearing perspectives of the characters.
[toy making noises]
[sound cuts to silence]
Yeah, the movie's not afraid to go completely silent when we're hearing things from Regan's perspective.
And thus, she doesn't realize at first when that rocket toy starts making lots of noise, because Beau has put the batteries back in it.
Lee bolts towards Beau in silent terror, trying to beat the creature he sees headed towards his youngest.
But he doesn't prove fast enough, and right before he reaches him, Beau is attacked and killed by an alien monster.
That's how you know a movie's playin for keeps - when it kills its cute little kid character in the first ten minutes. Dayum.
Man, I guess there's not too much to say after seeing something like that, other than
TITLE CAAARD!
That's a dusty quiet place!
It's now more than one year later, and the Abbott family has done everything they can to adapt to this new way of living,
including having a bunch of cameras watching over their property
and reminding themselves of their circumstances with admittedly cheesy newspaper headlines and whiteboard musings.
No, I don't think Lee would actually write "What is the WEAKNESS" on his whiteboard,
but they've gotta give us exposition somehow, and it ain't about to be through dialogue.
In a matter of minutes, we learn everything we need to know here - primarily that the aliens operate on sound and there are three of them in the area. Great.
Although Lee's efforts to contact other countries with S.O.S. radio signals have proven unsuccessful so far,
we do see that there are other survivors in this world based on the Beacons of Gondor he sees lit up in the distance.
Lee makes sure to light his own flame to let those nearby families know "Hey, still here, haven't gotten killed by the monsters yet!"
Part of the reason they've survived so long - long enough to deck out their entire farm in Christmas lights -
is because they've listened to that newspaper headline and are constructing a living quarters underground.
This subterranean hang zone is being prepared in anticipation of a new baby, which, like, damn Evelyn and Lee, that is a risky move in this world.
You've literally gotta be quiet all the time - how you 'bout to have a baby, number one source of crying and loud poopy butts?
But for many people, there's no point in living if you can't carry on the species,
thanks, evolution,
and risking everything to have a baby is very on-brand for this movie's themes of familial love and survival.
In further preparation for the baby, they've created a breathing-friendly casket bed full of stuffed animals,
and are paper mache-ing the walls in the basement to help muffle sound.
Other than that, though, they're just trying to live normal lives, yo.
Evelyn home-schools the kids - although I guess band is out of the question -
she makes floorboard fish dinners - just, you know, can't have that skin too crispy -
and the kids play everyone's favorite quiet board game, Softopoly.
Huh, I guess it's actually NOT that hard to be quiet all the time.
[crash]
OH SHEEIT!
Lee puts out the fire but they're worried the damage is done - was that noise loud enough to bring upon the wrath of the sonic hunters?
A noise on the roof seems to suggest so, but when Lee goes to check out the window...
[raccoon chittering]
Oh, it was just a coupla cute trash bandits.
Can't be squealin' all loud like that, little buddies, or else you're gonna wind up being ALIEN FOOD!!
Lee spends a lot of his time trying to educate himself about the human ear so he can fix up Regan's cochlear implant.
[static]
It's a lot of hard work, so he's gotta make sure to take the occasional break and be a good husband
by silently slow dancing with Evelyn to some Neil Young on their headphones.
Good thing they've got Harvest Moon available and aren't just stuck with his latter day Monsanto material.
That would be a bummer!
The next day, as Lee prepares their sandwalk and Evelyn listens to their unborn baby's heartbeat, Regan tries to go into her dad's basement workshop only to be told
No! She is NOT allowed down there!
Lee tells her that she knows why she's not allowed, but I'm actually not sure - is it because she'll make noise? I don't know.
He tries to give her his latest hearing aid effort but she's resistant because his attempts to fix the implant never seem to work.
Sure enough, this latest iteration doesn't appear to have done the trick.
[silence]
Regan is a headstrong little girl, and despite the dangers, she wants to come with Lee on one of his scavenging missions.
But he tells her she needs to stay home with Evelyn, and instead takes along Marcus, who is not excited to leave the safety of his homestead.
Lee takes Marcus to a river to collect some fish, and it's there that he fills him in on a little secret:
They can make small noises as long as there's something louder around them, like a river, to drown them out. And if they want to make big noises? Well-
WATERFAAALL!
CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!
It's actually impressive how out-of-place human dialogue sounds when you finally hear it in this movie.
"You're all right...you're all right. I promise."
In fact the sound design, done by Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn,
sound editors who have worked on everything from Lord of the Rings to Transformers, has been nominated for an Academy Award.
Sadly, it's about the only representation the horror genre got from the Oscars this year, because Annihilation and Toni Collette were fuckin' robbed!
During the father and son's waterfall-covered conversation, Marcus asks Lee if he blames Regan for the death of Beau,
and, more pointedly, if Lee still loves his daughter.
"Of course I do."
"You should tell her."
Because, even though a year has passed, Beau's death still weighs heavily on everyone in this family.
Evelyn takes time to quietly cry in his old room, and Regan, who blames herself for her little bro's death,
sneaks away from home to visit his memorial and leave the toy rocket ship there - only after neutralizing its sound-making capabilities, of course.
A Quiet Place is as much a dramatic family story as it is a horror movie.
And that's okay!
On their way home from the waterfall, Marcus and Lee run into an old man in the woods who's standing over the body of a woman.
The lady is likely his wife, and it looks like she's been eviscerated.
I'm assuming she got clawed down by the aliens? Or maybe her husband killed her, who knows.
In any case, it scares the living shit out of Marcus, and Lee does his best to tell the old man to STFU.
But the dude doesn't listen, and instead, after he...eats his own chin? What the fuck?
He lets loose a loud sound of anguish.
[yells]
Lee and Marcus hide as the guy gets killed in an apparent suicide by monster.
Hey, to be fair, it seems like the monsters kill ya quickly, so if you're lookin' to go out, might as well cause a ruckus and do it that way.
Back at home, Evelyn's menial laundry work ends up being a forebearer of danger, after she accidentally exposes a nail in the steps.
That proves to be pretty inconvenient later on, after she discovers that her water has broken.
As she heads downstairs to flip on a warning light, she steps right onto the newly freed nail,
but thankfully, Evelyn is one tough lady and she manages to stay quiet even as she has to pry her own foot free.
Unfortunately, during this incident she knocked over a glass picture frame,
so after she makes it over to a light switch and activates the red warning lights they've strung outside on their farm,
she goes to return upstairs only to find there's an alien in the house, and I don't think it's here to be a midwife monster.
Evelyn thinks fast and sets an egg timer on a shelf, then bloodily steps her way over to the other side of the basement to hide.
The monster comes downstairs and, with its super gross super hearing, detects the ticking of the egg timer.
After the alarm goes off the alien freaks out and attacks it, affording Evelyn the chance to escape upstairs.
Lee and Marcus make it back home and see the red warning lights, which sends them into a panic.
Lee assigns Marcus to rocket duty so he can create a distraction and save Evelyn, who by now has made it into a bathtub where she's painfully awaiting to give birth,
biting her tongue to stay hidden from the monster creeping up behind her.
Luckily, Marcus doesn't take a long, long time and he becomes a rocket man right before it's too late.
[yells]
[fireworks exploding]
The noisy distraction is seen by Regan, who starts heading home, while Lee runs into the house with a shotgun at the ready.
He follows his wife's bloody footsteps upstairs and although she's missing from the bathtub,
a cheap jump-scare alerts him that she's now hiding in the shower along with their beautiful new replacement baby.
Maybe, uh...maybe keep the toys away from this one, huh?
Lee carries his wife and newborn over to the maternity barn, so they can deal with this baby who immediately begins wailing his little baby lungs out.
Yeah, ya better get under that mattress hole cover, bud.
But don't worry too much about the Abbotts, they're very prepared for this moment - look,
♫ It's a babe in a box! ♫
The newspaper walls in their underground room work well enough to allow them to talk,
so, in her first spoken dialogue of the film, Evelyn tells Lee to go find their other kids and bring them back home to safety.
"Who are we if we can't protect them?"
He promises her and heads out from their underground room, somehow not noticing that a nearby broken pipe is currently flooding the entire barn.
Seriously, how'd he not hear that? And what broke that pipe? Monsters, I guess?
On her way back to the farm, Regan is unknowingly approached by one of the monsters coming out of the cornfield.
Although her disability prevents her from hearing that it's behind her, there IS a reaction with her new cochlear implant that causes discomfort for both of them.
[feedback]
The noise ends up being so painful to the alien monster that it runs away, and when the implant quiets down in response,
Regan realizes that she's got some Monster Radar in her head...I- I think. Right? Is that what she's realizing there?
She continues on her way and meets up with Marcus, so together they head to to the top of the grain silo and light a signal fire to show where they are.
But eventually they run out of lighter fluid, and although Marcus wants to stay there, believing that Lee will come for them,
Regan doesn't have as much faith in their patriarchal protector.
Back in the barn, the broken pipe has by now flooded the underground safety chamber, leading the newborn Abbott baby to find itself in a real Moses situation.
Even worse, one of those monsters is somehow downstairs now,
so Evelyn has to very quietly grab her baby and hide behind this makeshift waterfall while the monster clicks at her to use echolocation like a dolphin.
[clicking]
Makes sense. It's like I always say: Dolphins ARE the alien monsters of the sea!
Before it can fully detect her, though, the argument between the kids leads Marcus to fall through the grain silo roof,
and that noise distracts the alien away from Evelyn and the baby.
It also alerts Lee to where his children are, and he watches as the monster runs towards the sound like a god damn velociraptor.
Regan jumps down to save her brother from grain entrapment, which, like I mentioned in the Jigsaw Kill Count, is a seriously scary way to die.
Oh, also, fun fact that I really like, apparently the filmmakers spent their budget locally,
including hiring local farmers to grow the 20 tons of corn needed for this scene.
They also actually built that 70 foot silo AND planted cornfields on the farm a year before production began,
so they kinda helped revitalize this little farming area in upstate New York.
The kids avoid drowning in grain thanks to a flat piece of wreckage that they both manage to get on top of.
See, Jack and Rose? Two people CAN fit. It's not that hard!
Unfortunately, this whole corny mishap has caused way too much noise already.
[crash, growl]
The kids shield themselves from the monster, who gets agitated over the feedback from Regan's cochlear implant
and eventually gets so incensed that it runs away from them, tearing itself free through the side of the silo.
Them monster claws be sharp, son!
Lee gets over to the silo and finally reunites with his children, but after a brief check-in with each other, they hear the monster nearby
so he sends the kids to a truck that they have situated on a hill in case of emergencies.
Lee arms himself with an axe but he's too slow against the monster, who knocks him aside and causes Marcus to call out.
"Dad!"
The feedback in the cochlear implant gets to be too much for Regan to handle, so she turns it off,
inadvertantly leaving them vulnerable to the monster when it charges at the truck to attack them.
Lee gets back up and sees that his children are in jeopardy, but he knows that he doesn't have the strength to fight the monster off.
And so he decides to do the only thing he can think of.
He signs to his daughter that he loves her - in fact, that he has ALWAYS loved her - and then gives her and his son the chance to escape with their lives.
[yells]
With that, the alien runs from the truck and charges at Lee, killing him with a swipe that the movie doesn't show us.
This is one of those occasions where I won't complain about an offscreen kill, 'cause we don't need to see this self-sacrificing father get torn to bloody bits.
Marcus shifts the truck out of park and as Regan watches the horror behind them,
the vehicle rolls quietly down the hill and back to the farmhouse, where Evelyn is waiting to embrace the kids with love and protection.
That protection means keeping these kids alive, so they all head into the basement where the baby is still safe,
and Regan finally sees how much work her father had been putting in towards making her a new cochlear implant.
Aw, don't cry little girl, not everyone can keep a neat workspace.
With Marcus on baby duty, Evelyn is free to use the shotgun, which is bout to come in handy since one of those monsters is coming downstairs.
It approaches Evelyn and Regan slowly, trying to detect them, and that's when Lee's ridiculous whiteboard notes come in handy for Regan.
She realizes that the feedback from her cochlear implant, while painful for her,
is an even bigger weakness for the monster, who is brought to its crab-like knees at the high-pitched sound.
Inspiration strikes Regan and she slams the device against a microphone to create a supersonic attack that cracks this Venom-looking bastard's head right open,
exposing the vulnerable flesh beneath its armor-like exterior and allowing Evelyn to put it down with a HEAD SHOT.
Oh, hell yeah.
I'm not gonna put the alien on the count cause it's not exactly humanoid, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good kill, Evelyn, keep up the good work.
She's gonna need to keep it up, too, cause remember what else was on Lee's whiteboard of exposition - the fact that there are THREE aliens in the area.
And it looks like that shotgun blast has brought the other two running towards the homestead.
But as we've all seen by now, the Abbots are strong and the Abbotts are survivors,
so the movie ends with Regan turning up the radio in preparation for more feedback, and Evelyn cockin' that shotgun like a muthafucka.
[gun cocking]
[The Numbers music]
There were only 4 kills in A Quiet Place, and the victims consisted of one woman and three dudes,
although that first dude was a real little dude, dude!
With a runtime of 90 minutes, that left us with a kill on average every 22 and a half minutes.
I'll give the Golden Chainsaw for coolest kill to Beau.
It's not particularly graphic, but it was obviously super impactful - not only to the viewing audience, but also to the characters, who never quite got over it.
Dull Machete for lamest kill will go to the woman in the woods they found already dead.
Or the man in the woods, since there was even less blood involved? I don't know, this movie's not really about the kills.
And that's it! A Quiet Place was released in 2018 and has a sequel in development slated for May of 2020.
I'll have another episode for you next week, but until then, I'm James A. Janisse.
This has been the Kill Count.
Thanks a lot for watching this Kill Count!
I wanna thank the people who helped me with the ASL "to the numbers" bit.
That includes Zach, David Wheeler, Jettvillaire, Liz Zarb, Allysa Dale, Krista Allen, David, and Jesse Cruz.
I know my signing probably isn't the best, I've never done it before.
But I wish I had learned it, it seems like a very practical language to know.
Thanks everyone, be good people.
[yells]