Movie Review A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place (2018)

Directed by John Krasinski 

Written by Brian Woods, Scott Beck, John Krasinski 

Starring John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe 

Release Date April 16th, 2018

Published June 28th, 2024 

Legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock once offered a brilliant dissection of suspense in movies. Imagine a man carrying a bomb. It's in a briefcase. No one other than the man carrying the briefcase knows that there is a bomb inside. We, the audience, know the bomb is there because we watched the man carrying the briefcase, carefully and meticulously assemble and place the bomb in the briefcase. The excitement is that a bomb is going to go off and cause death, destruction and chaos. But, suspense, is watching the man build the bomb, place it in the briefcase, walk gingerly, awkwardly and very carefully to the place where the bomb is to be placed. 

The tension continues to build as the man places the briefcase under a bench in a park filled with people. The suspense mounts when the man leaves, leaving behind the briefcase, precariously positioned beneath the bench. The tension grows to unbearable levels as the bomber tries to leave, only to be stopped by s0meone who mentions that he forgot his briefcase. The bomber is sweating and stammering, he needs to get away but he doesn't want anyone to know about the bomb. The ticking of the timer is evident to us and to the bomber, he has mere moments to get himself safely away from the explosion that is set to kill anyone close to it. What does he do?

Find my full length review at Horror.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Suburbicon

Suburbicon (2017) 

Directed by George Clooney 

Written by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, George Clooney

Starring Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Noah Jupe, Oscar Isaac

Release Date October 27th, 2017 

Matt Damon stars in Suburbicon as Gardner, a man in debt to the mob and desiring to get rid of his wheelchair bound wife, Rose (Julianne Moore) so that he can be with Rose’s twin sister Margaret (Julianne Moore). Caught in the middle of Gardner’s scheme is his son, Nicky (Noah Jupe). When after Gardner’s wife is murdered, Nicky goes along to the police lineup, he spies his father intentionally failing to identify the killers. Here is where the façade of his father’s life comes tumbling down.

Meanwhile, in an entirely separate movie, a black family, the Mayer’s, has moved in next door to Gardner and his family. Suburbicon is set in the 1950s and so, naturally, the neighbors don’t take kindly to the sudden integration of their suburban enclave. While Gardner is plotting, and committing murders on one side of the fence, the rest of the neighborhood is busy trying to run the Mayers’ out of the neighborhood on the other side.

In some version of Suburbicon these two plots meet and make sense together. In this version of the movie however, the only connection between the plots is via editing them into what is only ostensibly the same movie. Somewhere, we can assume, these plots are meant to comment upon one another and make some deeper, metaphoric point but the whole final product that is Suburbicon is so muddled that it’s impossible to make out what that metaphoric meaning might be.

It's rare to watch a movie that has no tone or momentum. Suburbicon is a movie that just sort of happens in front of you. I watched the first hour of Suburbicon waiting for the movie to actually begin. I just assumed at some point that the movie would coalesce into some sort of identifiable narrative with identifiable characters and it just never happens. The film cuts between plots willy nilly and yet cannot find momentum even in chaotic dissonance.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal