Horror movies tend to require a suspension of disbelief, and some of them even thrive on it. When a final girl wanders into a room she shouldn’t, or a besieged family simply refuses to move out of their haunted house, it’s delicious to share in that frustration with a vocal audience. “Don’t go in there!†“Watch out!†“Why are you running upstairs and not out the front door?â€
John Krasinski’s new horror film A Quiet Place is expertly staged, well-reviewed, and predicted to make a bundle at the box office, but it, too, has its fair share of shout-at-the-screen stumpers. Still, I was willing to accept most of them. Does it make any sense that Emily Blunt would get pregnant if she’s living in a post-apocalyptic world where sound-sensitive beasts will kill her family when the newborn makes a single noise? Not really, but think of the suspense! Are those monsters as swift or slow as the plot demands? Yes, they are, but you just have to go with it. And who, exactly, keeps giving Blunt a salon-blonde dye job in this dystopia? I kept waiting to find out, but the phantom hairdresser remained stubbornly offscreen.
There was one suspension of disbelief, though, that was simply too much for me to buy. I’ll admit that it was a stupid preoccupation, but I couldn’t shake this nagging thought while watching A Quiet Place.
Why didn’t they ever wear socks?
For the entirety of the film, Krasinski, Blunt, and their two young children go barefoot so the big-eared but blind monsters outside their home won’t hear the family’s footsteps. (They even go so far as to build a trail of soft sand wherever they walk.) Obviously, it makes sense for these people to not wear shoes. Shoes are noisy, duh! It’s the apocalypse, honey: Time to throw out those Louboutins!
Buuuut … shouldn’t they at least be wearing socks? As any sneaky kid knows all too well, a nice pair of soft socks make your footsteps even quieter, especially if you’re slapping those feet down onto hard surfaces on the regular. I just walked around my house with one sock on and one sock off (we run only the finest, most rigorous scientific tests on Vulture) and the socked foot made so much less noise on my hardwood floors that it wasn’t even a contest. Ask any parent who wants to keep his newborn’s nap undisturbed, or any pet owner who hopes to tiptoe to the fridge without alerting her dog: Socks are the way to go.
Not to mention the hygiene issues! If Krasinski and Blunt’s weary survivors still want to keep it lit in the bedroom — and to judge by Blunt’s pregnant belly, not even the apocalypse will prevent her from Pamming it up with Jim from The Office — maybe they should get some socks on those grimy-ass feet! Put a little effort in, and your spouse surely will thank you.
Perhaps Krasinski thought the sockless look was more cinematic, or maybe he felt that walking around in bare feet made the characters more vulnerable. Still, if he wanted me to take this family’s survivalist strategies more seriously, someone might have tried on a damn pair of socks once in a while. I don’t doubt that if this film is a hit, we’ll see A Quieter Place green-lit sooner rather than later. Let’s hope that for the sequel, they manage to pour a sand trail up the stairs to the sock drawer.
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