This is perhaps only partly because Marcus is the oldest boy. But Lee wants Regan to stay home and help Evelyn in his absence. On the other hand, their eldest, Regan (Millicent Simmonds, about 14), resents that Marcus is always the one to accompany Lee on his trips - and Marcus would be happy to let his older sister go in his place.
Perhaps a good husband and father, like a good priest, is nowhere likelier than in a horror movie of another sort. A couple of years ago, in a pair of essays on problems around the negativity of religious representation in Hollywood movies, I noted that positive depictions of Catholic faith and identity in major Hollywood films in recent years tend to be almost exclusively in a particular sort of horror film. There isn’t much concern about traditional gender roles in their relationship, and the considerable masculinity on display is anything but toxic. Evelyn, carrying their fourth child for much of the movie, home schools Marcus (Noah Jupe, about 12) in math and English, along with doing the cooking and cleaning, though she can handle the family’s lone shotgun as well as Lee.īearded Lee tinkers with the elaborate surveillance system with which he has tricked out their remote farmhouse compound and takes Marcus on father-son hunting-gathering expeditions, training him to assume, if necessary, Lee’s role as chief provider and protector.Ĭentrally, A Quiet Place offers an empathic portrayal of disability, namely deafness - the one disability that would seem most dangerous given the premise, but which turns out to hold a key to survival. Their slow dance to Neil Young’s Harvest Moon - sharing earbuds because the blind monsters track their prey by sound, so any significant noise is potentially deadly - is the most tender screen dance in ages.Įvelyn and Lee are archetypal parents, nurturing and self-sacrificing. Mom and Dad - per the end credits, Evelyn and Lee Abbott, played by real-life husband and wife Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, who also directs - have an easy emotional intimacy and awareness of one another that would be moving and enviable in any screen couple.