'A QUIET PLACE': A PROVOCATIVE ALLEGORY

by Andy Nowicki

Back in 2016, many claimed that “Angry Birds,” a movie based on the famous computer game, was in fact an Alt Right-ish allegory referencing the migrant invasion of the West, allegedly making a sympathetic pitch to what is often nastily called “nativism,” but is, more properly speaking, a rational defense of one’s homeland and heritage against its malevolently-willed demographic dilution and destruction.

I never saw “Birds,” and thus can’t comment on the accuracy of the claims of its implicit “based”-ness. However, I suspect a similar controversy will soon erupt with respect to “A Quiet Place,” a new monster movie—and in its opening weekend, a surprise “monster hit”—directed and co-written by John Krasinski (best known as “Jim” from the US incarnation of The Office).

Put simply, “A Quiet Place” promotes some of the most Alt-Right-ish Affirmative-Right-ish aesthetics imaginable, along with depicting a devastating alien invasion that can easily be seen as an allegorical stand-in for the current, ongoing demographic ravagement of Western countries.

The invading aliens in the film are—to be sure—vicious, predatory, and murderous. And the family we get to know—who are basically the only characters we ever see over the course of the entire film—are a large, lovely, very white family living an extremely “trad” existence.

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As the world descends into chaos and ruin, the Abbots, composed of father Lee, mother Evelyn, and children Regan, Marcus, and Beau, dwell on a fortress-like compound in the countryside. As with M. Night Shyamalon’s rustic settlement depicted in “The Village,” sex roles in this family seem strictly delineated. The girls and women wear long skirts, cook, clean, and do laundry; the boys and men hunt and attend to the “hardier” tasks.

The grizzledly-bearded Lee (Krasinski) is a man’s man, a patriarch, the undisputed top dog of the household. He takes upon himself the task of protecting his family; what is more, he has built a sort of studio in which he monitors alien activity in the area, while attempting to brainstorm some strategy to defeat those pesky people-eaters.

"A Quiet Place" director/writer/star John Krasinski

The conspicuously pregnant Evelyn (Emily Blunt), meanwhile, takes on the primary role of home-school teacher to her children. Evelyn is supportive of Lee’s husbandly headship—in one scene, she encourages her son Marcus to accompany his father on a task the boy doesn’t wish to perform, out of deference to the old-fashioned notion that “father knows best.” Plus, she adds with gentle humor and a wry smile, the skittish boy really needs to be able to “to take care of your mother when she gets old and grey.” (Read: he needs to learn to be a man and grow a pair!)

Supportive wife and loving mother Evelyn Abbot (Emily Blunt)

In addition to being traditionalist-living compound dwellers who pray together before meals, the Abbots are also gun-owners. One of their family firearms plays a crucial role in a climactic scene, wherein a simple gun-cocking gesture by Evelyn—who, like any good frontierswoman, knows how to aim and shoot like a pro—gives the audience an occasion to cheer after a full 90 minutes of being on edge.

                  

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The inspired central premise of “A Quiet Place” also has Shyamalan-ian resonances. It seems that the aliens, while being completely blind, have an extraordinarily acute sense of hearing. Any living thing making a moderately loud noise will be set upon and gobbled up immediately. As a result, the family must remain silent at all times, speaking only in whispers or through the use of sign language.

The greater part of the film, thus, features no audible dialogue whatsoever. It is a brilliantly-conceived gimmick, putting one in mind of similarly audacious conceits like Hitchcock’s “Rope” or Nolan’s “Memento.”

However, to return to the realm of allegory, could the fearful silence which predominates in the Abbot household not, in its way, be a sort of metaphorical signifier of living in a time like our own, where speaking up in a manner that violates prescribed sensibilities on subjects like, say, the orchestrated displacement of the native population of the West by hostile elites, can get a person almost immediately destroyed by monstrously rabid “social justice warrior” fanatics?

In this sense, are not all we dissident traditionalist-minded folk much like the Abbots: bunkering down, laying low, trying desperately to survive in a world grown hostile to our values… yet all the while steadfastly refusing ever to surrender?

Andy Nowicki, assistant editor of Affirmative Right, is the author of eight books, including Under the Nihil, The Columbine Pilgrim, Considering Suicide, and Beauty and the Least. Visit his Soundcloud page and his YouTube channel. His author page is Alt Right Novelist.