Actor and filmmaker John Krasinski has responded publicly to the praise that famed novelist Stephen King had for his 2018 film, A Quiet Place. The sci-fi horror thriller marked the third directorial outing for Krasinski, by far becoming his most critically and financially successful film. Earning over $300 million on a $17 million budget, A Quiet Place helped prove that small films can still be big hits and that Krasinski is a filmmaker worth paying attention to.
The film’s premise revolves around a point in the not-so-distant future in which an alien species has decimated Earth’s population. The creatures use sound to find and kill their prey, forcing the cast of characters, a family that features Krasinski and real-life spouse Emily Blunt as parents, to either whisper or not speak at all. It’s a very simple-sounding concept for a film, and yet it works extremely well. Viewers are thrown into a tense environment straight from the start, and it’s this tension that keeps the entire momentum of the film moving so smoothly. Krasinski found creative ways to have his characters exist in a world rendered silent, and fans have been especially eager to see how many more challenging obstacles the characters have to face in the sequel.
One particularly vocal fan of A Quiet Place has been horror icon Stephen King. Shortly after the film was released, King used social media to let the world know how much he loved the film and its use of silence to instill fear in viewers. Any horror filmmaker would feel honored to have someone of King’s stature praise their work, but King went further - exchanging emails with Krasinski and even offering the former Office star his Boston Red Sox tickets. While speaking with CinemaBlend recently, however, Krasinski explained how much it meant to him to receive praise from King.
What I think about his writing is he is always ‘world’ first, he's always ‘characters’ first. He really puts you in that vibe. So anyway, the first movie was so overwhelming-- the response to it. But him in particular. Being from Boston, being a fan of his, he not only was incredibly kind publicly, but then we had an email exchange where he was very specific about what he loved about the movie and I was completely and totally blown away. I have not taken him up on his Red Sox tickets, but I will definitely do that someday.
Over the years, King has earned a somewhat notorious reputation for being very specific when it comes to the type of horror he enjoys. This degree of specificity has typically been reserved for rejecting adaptations of his own stories, such as Firestarter, The Running Man, and most famously, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. And while King’s objections regarding the aforementioned titles might seem like nit-picking to some, the fact of the matter is that as one of the biggest-selling authors of all time, his opinion matters. This is especially true if you happen to be a young filmmaker dealing with your first major hit.
Since A Quiet Place Part II has just been released, it’s hard to say just how well it will perform compared with the first film. The safe bet is that it will be another hit for Krasinski, whose friendly relationship with King might just end up creating future opportunities. After all, what fan of King’s wouldn’t love to see the tension and scares that Krasinski achieved in A Quiet Place in an adaptation of one of King’s books? It’s not such a far-fetched possibility for Krasinski, whose filmmaking career keeps getting stronger.
Source: CinemaBlend