Deus ex machina:
Latin, English: "god out of the machine". A plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.
(There are spoilers for A Quiet Place II and other movies in this post).
It's hard to know exactly when stories about alien invaders attacking earth began; clearly there are ancient carvings and painting showing humans being attacked from above by some sort of creatures, but whether they count as aliens or just mythical beings muddies the waters a bit. The first real proper alien invasion story is generally considered to be HG Wells's classic eighteen ninety eight novel, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. All of the usual elements are there: ghastly martians in spaceships, laser beams, terrified humans and so on. The impact of the novel over the years has been huge, with two movie versions (one in nineteen fifty three, the other in two thousand and five) and innumerable rip offs, homages and parodies (not to mention one very famous radio broadcast from a young Orson Welles).
While Well's novel may have been written before the twentieth century, it really wasn't until the nineteen fifties that Hollywood starting turning out alien invasion movies. Oh sure, Flash Gordon serials that featured the titular hero battling the alien Ming the Merciless started out in nineteen thirty six, but it really took a cold war to get America to start fearing an invasion. Yes, just as Godzilla was symbolizing the dangers of nuclear radiation in Japan, alien invaders were standing in for the Russians in the US. Starting with the nineteen fifty one classic Howard Hawks film THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, each year saw Hollywood churning out films that played on our fears of Russian invasion, with titles like EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS and INVASION OF THE SAUCER-MEN. Others, like INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and I MARRIED A CREATURE FROM OUTER SPACE showed a fear of not only Russian infiltration, but also the turning of good Americans into godless commies. And even with the cold war cooling, Hollywood kept making alien invasion movies, from Steven Spielberg's version of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS to the just released A QUIET PLACE PART II.
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| The titular creatures from 1957's INVASION OF THE SAUCER-MEN |
While I have enjoyed a number of these movies over the years, there is a central flaw in almost all of them that bugs me: the part where the aliens lose. Most of the movies follow the same formula: a nice, peaceful day is shattered when aliens arrive and start blasting (or in some cases, munching) people. The human casualties are terrible, but, just when things look their blackest, one of the humans (usually a scientist) discovers the alien's Achilles heel. Their weakness exposed, the aliens are defeated and the surviving humans all cheer. I get that most of these movies play out this way because ending the movie with the aliens winning would be a big bummer, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous*. Time and time again in these movies we are supposed to believe that an alien race that is far more advanced than ours could lose to the humans by not foreseeing an obvious flaw in their plan. Wells himself fell prey to this absurd notion by ending his novel with the almost triumphant aliens all dying from exposure to human germs. And since then aliens have been brought down by things like flashing headlights (INVASION OF THE SAUCER-MEN), a computer virus (INDEPENDENCE DAY) and, in one example of a movie embracing its absurdity, a Slim Whitman song (MARS ATTACKS!).
Now I understand that I'm not getting into the spirit of these movies, and again, I have enjoyed some of them, but it's still a stumbling block for me; I can only suspend my disbelief so far. Which brings us to John Krasinski's twenty eighteen film THE QUIET PLACE (which he also wrote and starred in). Which brought together elements from Ridley Scott's ALIEN (gooey monsters), Corman McCarthy's novel THE ROAD (post apocalyptic scrounging) and the English alien invasion movie, ATTACK THE BLOCK (toothy flesh eating aliens float down to earth), Krasinski's film added the clever premise of aliens that hunt entirely by sound, making even the simplest dropped item or misplaced foot a source of fear. THE QUIET PLACE worked effectively for its first two thirds, with Krasinski and Emily Blunt making a likable couple that try vainly to keep their family safe in a very dangerous world. But once again, I think the movie fails when Krasinski's teenage daughter, Regan (Millicent Simmonds) discovers that the normally indestructible aliens are made vulnerable by high frequency sounds. It seems more than a bit absurd that all the great scientists and researchers in the world were unable to find out what one kid armed with a walkman and a hearing aid does! This gets even more ludicrous the more you think about it: creatures with super good hearing might be weakened by loud sounds? You don't say. At one point we see newspaper headlines that write about the creatures, which means that the invasion didn't happen all at once; so there was enough time for people to report on the aliens, but not enough to discover what would seem to be their most obvious weak spot.
Still, despite my cynicism, I did enjoy THE QUIET PLACE overall, and I actually think that the recently released sequel is even better. To me the film works well because there is no time wasted on exposition or character introduction, meaning that it can get right down to the suspenseful scenes of people trying to avoid the aliens. And I think Krasinski has improved as a director, as in one sequence he effectively cross cuts between different characters in dangerous situations (due credit must also be given to editor Michael P. Shawver) to build to a very exciting climax. And as for the alien's weakness, well, even if it still bothers me, it doesn't kill my enjoyment of the film. This time I could suspend my disbelief.
*Of course, not all alien invasion movies end this way, as fans of Philip Kaufman's very good nineteen seventy eight remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS can attest to.
