I watched these two last week, so I’ll bundle them both into one post. Enjoy.
A Quiet Place: Day One
In a film whose plots make silence – or, at the most, whispering – pretty essential for survival, you need to do a lot of work with body language if you want to give your audience a convincing performance. Particularly the face. Fret not, then, because the expressive powerhouse that is Lupita Nyong’o is here you help you out as central character Samira, who witnesses the beginning of the alien invasion as she deals with terminal cancer. The plot doesn’t really focus on that latter element too much, which is fine, leaning into the sound design terror elements of the previous films. This is the first one without John Krasinski at the helm, and a decent argument could be made that this ‘day one’ premise film didn’t need to be made in the first place considering we’ve already witnessed it in the first film as well as the flashback at the beginning of the second.
Nyong’o, however, more than sells the product with her face alone. Getting her breakthrough role in 12 Years a Slave, the actress’ subsequent doppelganger performances in Jordan Peele’s Us proved she’s got the horror skills to pay the bills, with wide expressive eyes and terrifying croaky voices. Those eyes do much of the talking again here as she navigates an apocalyptic New York, reluctantly joining forces with Eric as they try to escape. There’s nothing like an animal friend to keep the tension rolling, though, and Samira’s service cat Frodo injects that extra bit of anxiety. Not quite as much anxiety as I had for the dogen in I Am Legend, though (I’m much more of a dog person rather than a cat person, if you’re interested. If you’re not, that’s cool).
There are a few genius tense setups to enjoy, particular that sewer one, and while it might not quite reach the giddy heights of the first two, Day One nonetheless represents a very admirable entry to the franchise.
Kind of Kindness
Poor Things was an anomaly. Really weird like all of Lanthimos’ projects, sure, but there was a kind of joyousness to everything too. Those set pieces absolutely popped, and the film was completely deserving of all the awards attention it received, particularly when it came to the design department.
With Kinds of Kindness, however, we’re firmly back in Lanthimos’ weird world. Poor Things and The Favourite are both stand out works largely because of the empathy you feel for central characters, no matter how eccentric they might be. The decision to expand the narrative into a triptych of eclectic tales here, then, is a risky one. It’s difficult to think of many examples where a plot with multiple plot lines works particularly well (Pulp Fiction’s probably one of the most successful examples, maybe Cloud Atlas too), and Kinds doesn’t pull it off, perhaps in part because each tale is separate, although different characters are portrayed by the same group of actors. The narratives get weaker and more bizarre with each entry, and nothing quite sticks. Also, it’d be nice if Lanthimos stopped doing nasty things to dogs (yep, I’m sure the on-screen events are faked and not actual examples of animal cruelty, but still) like he did previously in The Lobster, but…yeah. Leave those poochies alone.
While I’m not a huge fan of either The Lobster or The Killing of a Sacred Deer, both films undeniably carried a certain aura of dread and unease, with Irish lads Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan delivering compelling and unsettling performances. It’s hard to see any standout acting here, as much as I enjoy a bit of Willem Defoe weirdness. A weak attempt, and one that’s ultimately disjointed, unsatisfactory and flat.