The first, silent era of Hollywood, for example, was a bright period for deaf culture. But I can’t think of another franchise that has given a deaf or hard of hearing character the space to develop in this way, over multiple movies.Įven so, generalizations about “representational” deaf roles are difficult to make, because the relationship between disability and cinema has been so complicated and varied.
The movie isn’t as strong as its predecessor, by any stretch of the imagination. Regan is by now an established action hero, a development that lets the sequel focus on her little brother, Marcus, and his own journey to bravery. The sequel picks up with the surviving Abbotts on a careful hike to find other people, still terrorized by aliens but driven by the certainty that humanity will flourish together or perish in isolation. For example, hearing aids really do make astonishing noises at very high pitches, often reacting to other electronic devices in a way that causes horrible feedback Regan’s deafness is not just a convenient plot device but also a way to incorporate the messy aspects of medical technology into a story about the people who use it. It starred a young deaf actress, Millicent Simmonds, and featured aspects of deaf culture that seldom make it into Hollywood representations of disability. For all its logical inconsistencies, the first movie was well acted and very scary-much better, at least, than your average superhero clunker. The sequel, A Quiet Place Part II, is now coming to streaming on HBO Max, an event that raises the question of what kinds of fictional worlds merit the franchise treatment. The volume of noise that attracts the aliens is also confusing: If the merest rustle catches the aliens’ attention, why aren’t they attacking the rats as well as the humans? If their hearing is compromised by running water, as we find out when two of the Abbotts have a chat by a waterfall, why doesn’t the family just live there? Why aren’t the aliens attacking the waterfall? What happens if somebody farts in their sleep? Abbott pumps her shotgun and her daughter readies their speaker system for carnage.Īs many viewers have pointed out online, the Abbotts appear to have abundant electricity in their home but somehow also use oil lamps, which exist in the film purely to be knocked over and cause trouble.
Regan eventually refashions her hearing aid into a screeching device to torture the aliens, and the first movie ends on a cliff-hanger, as Mrs. That the family is able to communicate silently helps them keep quiet in their DIY homestead in upstate New York, where they live underground, nestled into a soundproof basement. The conceit is well suited for the genre: The Abbott family have survived an onslaught of extraterrestrials that kill anything making the slightest noise because their daughter, Regan, is deaf, so they can communicate with one another using American Sign Language. It is by now something of a shared joke among its fans that the movie A Quiet Place, the surprise hit of 2018, a horror story in which aliens hunt humans by sound, does not really make sense.