10 Movie Idiots Who Made Simple Solutions Look IMPOSSIBLE

You know what, while we’re at it, let’s have a moment for The Quiet Place as well. It seems like in any situation with sonically-dependent monsters taking over the earth, a whole lot of common sense goes out of the window.

A Quiet Place has a lot more budget to its name, and better writing than The Silence could have even hoped to achieve. These sound-hating aliens have a better raison-d’etre too, since their limited backstory does reveal alien invasion plans which involve destroying anything that makes sound to create a habitable environment for their very sensitive ears. They’re better hunters than their Silence counterparts, and way, way smarter – so I don’t think the woodchipper remedy would suffice here.

Our protagonists, the Abbott family, are definitely pretty smart, then. They’d have to be to have survived this long in the silent hellscape that earth has become. Once again, they’re greatly helped by their knowledge of ASL they already used to communicate with their daughter Regan (this time the deaf character is actually played by deaf actress Millicent Simmonds, so good work on the inclusivity there!) They’ve set up a lot of gadgets to help them in their survival against the alien creatures, and father Lee even has some technological know-how with his attempts to make a hearing aid himself for his daughter. So they’re some smart cookies, I guess?

Sadly not. The opening of A Quiet Place truly shocked audiences with the immediate offing of Beau, the youngest son. He finds a space ship toy, which his terrified father quickly confiscates – removing the batteries and placing both on a shelf and warning him that it’s too loud to keep. His sister sneaks him the little rocket ship so he can play with it to his hearts content. Only, he also picks up the batteries, and once he’s figured out how to replace them, it immediately sets off lights and beeps. Ultimately, he gets got by the super speedy aliens. Heartbreaking.

Yes, they were smart enough to recognise the potential threat of a noisy toy, and it’s true that they weren’t really to know Beau would sneak him the toy like a well-meaning big sister who just wants her little brother to have some fun in this incredibly bleak time.

But wouldn’t it make a bit more sense to just… take the batteries out and let him keep the toy? No batteries means no beeps, and no beeps means no alerting the big scary monsters. Then you could let your little son have a nice new toy to play with, which would be a pretty nice distraction from the ongoing terror. And even if you did ultimately leave the toy behind instead of giving it to your son, those batteries are a wasted opportunity. He’s clearly the tech guy, so wouldn’t he be on the lookout for any power supplies?

If there’s one thing Outlast has taught me, it’s to always collect the batteries.