John Krasinski loves Totinos Pizza Rolls.

A Quiet Place is a stupid ass movie and in a lot of ways it’s almost frustrating to watch.

Directed by John Krasinski and based on a screenplay by John Krasinski, A Quiet Place stars John Krasinski as Kohn Jrasinski, one of the shittest survivalists that also managed to survive an alien invasion and thrive…no, barely make it through thanks to plot armor written by himself. He lives on a farm with his family Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and his son Marcus (Noah Jupe) and deaf daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and most importantly does not live on a farm with his youngest son Beau (Cade Woodward).

Because Beau gets murdered in the opening scene by a monster and I know we’re supposed to feel bad for the kid but I’m glad that stupid bastard died. A Quiet Place takes place in a world where Earth was invaded by aliens and most of humanity has been wiped out over the course of a year. Those aliens can apparently hear a mosquito fart from two miles away, unless they plot dictates they can’t. But they can definitely hear some dumbass kid who put batteries into a toy and decided to play with it on the way home from the store. Why was the whole family going to the store in an alien apocalypse?

A Quiet Place requires an Olympic-level performance of giving the benefit of the doubt to enjoy, because most of the scenes are set up to get us to the next scene. There’s no consistency in how good the alien’s hearing is, as in one moment the family is speaking using sign language and playing a board game with cotton pieces because even in the house they aren’t safe enough to whisper or clickity clack plastic pieces on a game board. Jesus Christ. How do you cook food in that environment? How do you eat? Everyone must have mastered the one cheek sneak otherwise a really juicy fart would spell your death. What happens if John Krasinski undercooks dinner and one of the kids gets horrible, gut-wrenching diarrhea?

You gotta feel bad for the kids but damn are the parents stupid and self-destructive. Evelyn is pregnant in this movie, ready to give birth in a world where her morning sickness pukes could kill the whole family, and she’s going to bring the one thing into their world that cannot be voluntarily silenced. Actually it can, but more on that in the second movie and it doesn’t work well there either. The point is that having a kid is probably the absolute stupidest thing you could do in this world. As the old saying goes, when there’s aliens on the field, play in the mud. Stick it in her pooper, John.

A Quiet Place benefits from good actors and strong cinematography. It makes use of silence in a way that very few other movies manage to pull off, and that’s why I never watched it in a theater. Because you know what ruins a film that relies heavily on completely silent scenes? Some jagoff adjusting his seat or munching on nachos. I’m that jagoff with the nachos by the way, I do love me some nachos. But the quiet scenes do get you on the edge of your seat, and for a moment you forget just how stupid the whole premise is.

Is A Quiet Place a bad movie? Like I said, you’ve got some steep hills to climb in the “shut up brain” department to get over the ridiculous minutia going from scene to scene. And if you can do that, the movie is pretty good and damn near enjoyable I’d say. It’s got some moments of humanity between the scenes of monsters running around doing monster shit. Some bonding between the family members. And then the ending happens and you’re like “oh right this is stupid.”

I’m not asking for realism. If you want to throw a race of aliens that show up on Earth on the back of a meteor and have skin that’s so hard that even bombs can’t destroy it, I’ll roll with that. I’ll even accept for the sake of narrative that the newspapers survived long enough to print out papers about the alien invasion and that people were printing and delivering those papers somewhere. I just want more consistency and a lot of this film feels tailor made for the trailer.

Trailer-made.

I enjoyed A Quiet Place more than this review probably implies, but it’s certainly not a film I plan on ever watching again.

Rating: B