A Quiet Place Review: The Power of Silence

A quiet place was directed by John Krasinski and stars himself, Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, and Noah Jupe. In it, a breed of blind creatures hunt humans solely based off of sound and the film looks at one family’s attempts to survive in such a chaotic and catastrophic world. It succeeds due to its originality and extremely unique style and shows that movies with these kinds of fresh ideas can still be successful.

I found very few flaws in this movie that were either highly noticeable or completely took me out of the world that it was building. It did have one major plothole involving a waterfall that the family visited in the film and they could have easily moved nearby where there was a louder noise and avoided any conflict. Yes, this is an apparent issue, however it wasn’t one that destroyed the film but instead was just a minor nuisance once you sat down and thought about it afterward. Instead, one of my main issue with the film was the problems caused by its mere 91-minute runtime. Once I left the theater, I never really felt a sense of completeness and it didn’t seem like I’d watched a full movie. This became especially apparent with the movies open end and pseudo-cliffhanger that only highlighted that lack of completion in the screenplay. The action was great and the climax was fantastic, but I noticed they didn’t really allow enough time for a resolution and the final act, which should have tied everything together, only felt like an extenstion to said climax. However, this was brief problem that didn’t really show until the final few minutes of the movie meaning that it didn’t effect the other hour and 20 minutes or so. Overall, I had very few problems with this movie, and besides one major plothole that can be overlooked and an excessively short runtime, there is not much else to critique.

So now comes all of the praise towards the many fantastic aspects of this movie. To start, I must discuss the creature as it was by far the best part. It fixed many of the issues plaguing monster horror movies nowadays such as constantly showing the creature to the point where it’s no longer frightening or not playing by the movie’s established rules. Building on the first of those points, you rarely see the creature in full until the final act and until then, it’s only shown in ways where you can never truly create a sense of scale and design of the monster itself. It is, therefore, this mysteriousness that makes the creature as horrifying as it is to the viewers instead of merely its design. And while the actual design of the creature, when it was finally shown, was somewhat reminiscent of aliens and not the most original, it can easily be forgiven as that was such a small feature overall. The monsters first appearance was only a split second blur and its the idea that you don’t know what’s truly out there for the majority of the film that is terrifying. Another well-done aspect was that the creature and the main protagonists always adhere to the film’s rules. The creatures hunt solely based off of sound and the second you make a loud noise, they can find you. There was no point in the film where I felt that characters were being written out of trouble just so they could survive where they actually shouldn’t have. When a character would escape a situation, it’s because they truly outsmarted the creature by turning its sense of sound into a weakness. There were numerous instances where they set off louder noises in different areas as distractions and it was due to this that the viewers always felt a sense of realism and knew that characters made it out of predicaments from more than just sloppy writing. Lastly, for the main part of the creature: it’s ability to use sound for hunting. This was practically the entire basis of the movie and it worked beautifully. The monster’s hunting skills created some extremely tense moments and never got tiring throughout the duration of the film. It felt wholly original and I have nothing but praise to give towards the creature in this movie; it just worked.

Here, I want to focus on sound as a whole in this movie and how the film used it to its advantage perfectly. A the beginning, I was worried that the sign language and subtitle part, as well as the idea of building tension through even the tiniest noise, would get tiring and downright boring by the end. However, I could not have been more wrong. The film had me on the edge of my seat throughout the entire runtime and it was rare that I could sit back and actually relax. By having the characters able to die at any moment and even the sound of a twig snapping being the cause, it forced the audiences to focus at all times and it allowed for even a simple floorboard creak to cause panic. The sign language aspect worked very well and they had great justification for why the family was fluent in it already. It also made it all the more powerful the few times a line was actually spoken. The actors themselves also did a great job as they were able to communicate emotions with barely any dialogue and they accomplished that very effectively. Additionally, the score was beautiful and had its haunting moments but also times where it juxtaposed the scene perfectly. The music elevated every scene and blended in beautifully. The filmmakers strategically used every sound and were able to create a thrilling movie where every tiny noise forced viewers onto the edge of their seats. It took an extremely original concept and utilized it nearly flawlessly without it ever becoming dull: a feat that’s not easy to accomplish.

Lastly, I’ll take some time to discuss the overall plot of the movie and why it worked for me. This wasn’t a large scale movie like World War Z where the protagonists are on a quest for a cure or massive resolution but was instead a self-contained journey of a family merely trying to survive. Throughout its 90 minutes, there were really only 4 characters and that allowed for the writers to focus on the concept itself as well as the creatures. It instantly threw the audience right into the middle of the world and gave enough information to get by without having excessive exposition. This also allowed for one of my favorite openings to a movie that was both horrifying and gorgeously shot. This movie wasn’t trying to be an elaborate monster origin story or a character study but was instead a simple story of survival with a focus on an original idea and it accomplished each one of its goals impeccably.

A Quiet Place was a thrilling horror movie that I must praise for its originality and expertly crafted creature that kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. It had some extremely memorable moments and was shot with a unique style by actor and director John Krasinski. It had a few minor flaws, the main being its short runtime, but the amazing aspects vastly outnumbered the negatives. This all made for an unforgettable film and one of my favorites of 2018 so far that I must rate an outstanding 9/10.