Two Hours in the Dark (2010)

These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.

At least we got the original cast back, right? Not even that saves it. None of them could bring a sliver of hope to this special. Rather, they bring dread as we witness the light leaving from their eyes.

While the film didn’t hit me as emotionally as I wanted it to, I still enjoyed it. I simply wish there was a little more, particularly with the world building.

The quiet ache of guilt sitting at the dinner table, the silence after a truth is buried, and the way pain is passed down like a name.

A haunting look at grief, survival, and a mother’s quiet collapse in a world that never gave her room to fall.

Rather than following in the footsteps of poorly made horror flicks, “The Quiet Place” follows original concept.