Paramount’s post-apocalyptic creature feature A Quiet Place (our review here), the latest horror entry from the team at Platinum Dunes, screened for the first time just days ago at the 2018 SXSW Conference to a roar of applause and cheers. The moment was a particularly proud one for star and director John Krasinski, who rose to fame as the lovably sardonic Jim on NBC’s The Office during its nine-season run. “I wish I was being humble, but […] genuinely my brain can’t process what happened,” he says with a huge grin and a laugh. “I mean, that was truly one of the greatest experiences of my entire career.”
Producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller, who co-created Platinum Dunes with Michael Bay in 2001, were also on hand for the premiere and stoked to be part of the annual event. “We couldn’t be more blessed to be here,” Form says. “We started our career in [Austin] and we’ve never been to a film festival before. […] So to open SXSW with this movie for us… there was nothing better!”
A Quiet Place makes for Krasinski’s third directorial effort and is a marked shift in tone for the director, following 2009’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and 2016’s The Hollars–both comedies with dramatic sensibilities. The dive into horror was a surprising one even for the director himself.
“Last night someone said to me, ‘I never thought you’d do a horror movie,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I can’t watch horror movies!'” he admits.
Yet given the film’s heavy focus on family, Krasinski gravitated toward the project without hesitation, having just had his second daughter with wife and A Quiet Place co-star Emily Blunt. “The producers pitched me the idea […] a couple weeks after we had had our second daughter, so we were still in that envelope of sheer terror,” he says. “I was already worried about whether she was safe and whether she would survive and all those things, and so I was a wide-open vessel, I was an exposed nerve. […] And so I was wide open to read that first script, and truly I think that’s what we put into the movie. We were right there from the beginning.” He further reveals that Blunt was actually quite forward in her insistence that she play the role of the wife after reading his rewrite of the script, originally penned by Bryan Woods and Scott Beck. “She said, ‘No, I have to do it. […] This is the scariest part I’ve ever played […] because normally you pretend the things that you’re scared of in movies, and in this… this is what I’m actually scared of–protecting my kids, doing everything at all cost, these are the real fears!’ And I thought, Wow… that’s amazing.”
Form and Fuller were equally excited by the prospect of making a film like A Quiet Place–which does not feature its first line of audible dialogue until about half-way through its runtime. Though first making a name for itself with a run of successful horror remakes like 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and 2009’s Friday the 13th, Platinum Dunes continued to find success with original franchises like The Purge and Ouija. “I do think that at some point we realized that in order for our company to grow, we would need to broaden out and start to do original movies,” Fuller states. “With what’s happening in the movie business where it’s harder to get a movie into theaters and where it’s harder to have audiences really engage in something, you really have to step out of the box and come up with something that has a very fresh and original concept. And when we read [A Quiet Place‘s] script, that part of it was undeniable.”
“It’s the first time that we had felt that since we read The Purge,” Form echoes. “You know, this script comes in at 67 pages, and you’re like ‘Why is this script 67 pages? Oh–there’s no dialogue!’ […] So now you just have to figure out, can you sustain an entire film that way and actually get to know characters without anybody talking and fall in love with them? And then it was, You know, I think we can do this. It was just so original and fresh for us, we did everything we could to get the movie made.”
One of these notably original aspects of the film involves the family communicating via American Sign Language for much of its runtime. When considering the role of the couple’s deaf daughter in the film (played by standout Millicent Simmonds, who is, in fact, deaf in real life), Krasinski knew he wanted both his representation of ASL and the character to be as authentic as possible.
“It was non-negotiable for me to hire a deaf actress,” Krasinski explained.
“I didn’t know I was going to get so lucky to have not only a deaf actress, but the most beautiful human being who would walk me through the experience and be honest about what it meant to be deaf. [… Simmonds] was not intimidated. She would tell me, ‘This is what I would do in the moment […] and this is what a fight would look like with my dad.’ It was so great.”
Even further, Krasinski reveals that the young actress played a huge role in guiding the cast as they learned ASL. “Learning ASL for this was so amazing because, yes, it would be great for the movie, and, yes, it was a really cool thing to show on-screen… but for us, it was so much more than that because we had Millie.” He continues, “Having her… it was almost like she was my parent because as I was trying to sign to her, she had the most wide-open face and was so appreciative that we were even giving it a shot. And just saying, like, ‘That’s not quite it, do it again.’ It was like my best friend, mom, sister, everything, was teaching me ASL! It was such a beautiful moment. So I think that’s why it plays so well because she was […] such a beautiful guide through the entire experience of what this movie was.”
Fuller also credits Krasinski for enriching the experience on set, namely through his high level of activity in the writing and directing process that led to many of the film’s key ideas and nuances coming together to make for a more emotional, family-centered story. “[Krasinski] started talking about what he wanted to do with the material and I don’t know if we’ve ever had a filmmaker respond to material the way he did. Where you’re just like, wow… that is exactly the movie we want to make,” he gushes. “It was an amazing experience. The little touches that he brought to it, like his character trying to survive, [Blunt’s] character trying to thrive […] and not giving up, you know. I loved those touches that he put in.” These details no doubt elevate the film’s focus on the family as fleshed out characters worth caring about amidst all the horror. “[Krasinksi] was able to achieve that without anyone even talking to each other,” Fuller adds.
The sense of familial unity appeared to carry over into the filmmaking process as well. “Making the movie was like a family,” Form says. “John and his wife were on set, it was a tiny cast– the four of them–and then, you know, it was just a bunch of us sitting on a farm […] in Upstate New York with nowhere to go. Making a movie in the same location every day… it became very personal to a lot of people because usually when you’re making a movie, people are coming in and out of the movie and the energy changes. But that didn’t happen here because everyone was there every day.”
With A Quiet Place set to hit theaters next month, we were, of course, interested in what else Platinum Dunes has coming down the pipeline. From the looks of it, Bay, Fuller, and Form will keep things familiar with a mix of horror (The First Purge) and family-friendly projects (a live-action adaptation of Dora the Explorer) set to come in 2018 and 2019, respectively. When asked about the possibility of producing film content for platforms like Netflix and Amazon, Form states, “I’d love to make a movie for Netflix. […] I just… you know, it’s hard for us to understand what that is in a Platinum Dunes movie. Like how does what we do apply to that [platform].” For now though, Fuller expresses gratitude in still being able to produce movies that bring audiences together for a good time. “It’s the communal experience,” he says. “And we think A Quiet Place does deliver [that]. You can watch this in a theater with a large group and really go on a fun ride together.”
Looking ahead as a leading man, Krasinski will next begin promoting his titular role in the series Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan for Amazon Video–yet another Platinum Dunes co-production that will see a release this August. When asked if he would ever consider directing another horror film, Krasinski openly admits, “[A Quiet Place] hit me right in the heart, so it’ll be hard to find another movie that hits me in the heart like this.” He smiles after a pause though, adding, “But I’ll give it a shot.”
Paramount Pictures’ A Quiet Place will hit theaters on April 6, 2018.