Movie reviews: A Quiet Place, The Hurricane Heist
A QUIET PLACE (PG13)
Rating : 4/5
This sets the standard for what all horror films should be like.
The key ingredient is suspense, essential to something as original as A Quiet Place, as it features little audible dialogue.
It achieves this and much more, gripping at your emotions in what turns out to be a tale that speaks simple truths about family and love.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world where aliens resembling the Xenomorph from the Alien franchise roam every corner, these piranha-toothed monsters of inexplicable origins prey on one thing: sound.
The Abbott family go to great lengths to prevent any noise-making, such as going barefoot to silence their footsteps.
The terrific Emily Blunt plays Mrs Abbott, her perturbed expressions screaming intensity. A Quiet Place's director and star John Krasinski, Blunt's real-life husband, also delivers a believable performance as father figure Mr Abbott.
The Abbotts inhabit a world where speaking is penalised, and the fact that most of the communication among characters is carried out in sign language speaks volumes for a genre saturated with screaming.
So it was of great importance to Krasinski that a deaf actress was cast for the role of the couple's deaf daughter, andMillicent Simmonds portrays the complexities of a conflicted child well.
Catch this film if you are curious about how silence can be so captivating. - ETHAN LEUNG
THE HURRICANE HEIST (PG13)
Rating : 1/5
This actioner is a whirlwind recipe for disaster - bad script, cheesy acting and cringeworthy CGI, all set against an implausible scenario of a gang of thieves trying to pull off a robbery at the US Treasury in the midst of a Category 5 hurricane.
Set in Alabama, it stars British actor Toby Kebbell as a meteorologist who has a habit of repeating in a thick Southern drawl that the aforementioned hurricane will be the most disastrous one he has ever seen.
Maggie Grace plays the treasury agent who is wanted by the thieves as she is the only one who knows the passcode that unlocks the treasury.
Then there are the thieves, who provide a lesson in stupidity on how not to execute a heist. And our dauntless heroes are spared the destruction caused by the hurricane, thanks to impossible luck and the wondrous effects of CGI.
But if you are the type who can leave your brain at the door, The Hurricane Heist might still please you in that "so bad it's good" kind of way. - ETHAN LEUNG
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