may contain spoilers.
picture from here
Despite the brutality and constraints of their ever present endangerment, Jon Krasinki's A Quiet Place (2018) shows a family that has adapted and learned towards a full and naturally grounded life beyond what's available in modern society, especially urbana.
The Abbott family farm their own food, preserve their produce, have studied up on medicine and various technology, and venture into the lush wilderness to forage and fish. Additionally granted them through the horrific constraints presumably put on all of humanity by their sonically hypersensitive invaders are things so dramatically lost from 21st century life; the Abbotts walk barefoot to avoid unnecessarily loud footfalls, gaining a physical connection to the Earth through the soles of their feet; through their silence, the family are forced to listen, to be patient and sharp to each others feelings and opinions, and also they are forced to hear the natural world.
Amid the slew of apocalyptia before and the films that followed, leeching influence from Krasinki such as John R Leonetti's The Silence (2018) or Susanne Bier's Bird Box (2018), A Quiet Place stands out for the life that beats in it. The main events aren't epic journey's or battles, but family lives in the face of hardship; the core event is a birth. The territory visited throughout is always familiar to at least one member of the family, as they imprint on the landscape and it on them.
We are shown an end to noisy modern life, and a return to a world that booms with bird song, rustling leaves, rushing rivers and slavering waterfalls. Whereas Hollywood's apocalypse is a noisy show that ends all reality, Krasinski shows a gentler vision (despite the horror.) This for me has always prove na vision of apocalypse more intelligent; even the most horrifying apocalyptic film I have seen, Threads (1984), a film about nuclear devastation, goes far beyond the destruction of Sheffield by nuclear weapons to show a society soldier on, stunted and dumbfounded beyond recovery. by the threat being external, and in many animalistic predator/prey ways natural to some extent, A Quiet Place is allowed to show a pristine and hopeful vision of humanity and nature surviving.
