All three of these films attack the family in very different ways. A Quiet Place is about family surviving in a country that's destroyed; Emelie is about a family that thinks it's safe until they hire the wrong babysitter; and Hereditary is about a family haunting itself. Each is powerful, but which kind of conflict is the most effective on you?
A Quiet Place (2018)
I have been waiting a damned long time for A Quiet Place. Horror has a troubling history of relegating disabled characters to the roles of villains. I wrote about that phenomenon for Fireside Magazine last year. You can take solace in the well-meaning portrayals of Wait Until Dark and Silver Bullet, but those are moves with abled actors cripping it up, and screenplays that pander. They could never get beneath the surface.
Millicent Simmonds is a deaf actor, and she’s the emotional
core of this movie. She plays Regan, the oldest child in one of the few
families to survive an invasion of monsters. The monsters hunt on sound; they
can hear a toy space ship from miles away, and be there in seconds. Regan has
saved the family, because since they all know ASL, they know how to communicate
and live without speaking. They walk into town to scavenge on paths of sand to
quiet their footsteps. They have adapted.
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