Placed at the top of the box office (currently #2), A Quiet Place is a film that constantly surprises and entertains you at every corner. After recently watching John Krasinski’s film, I find myself still thinking about it. As it ends on a cliffhanger, the story is opened up to another movie, and judging by how well the tickets did, I think there will be a sequel.
The movie’s tagline, “If they hear you, they hunt you,” accurately summarizes the plot. The protagonists have to remain quiet in order to escape the creatures that hunt using their extraordinary hearing. That being said, Lee Abbott (John Krasinski) and Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) must use smart techniques to ensure their family’s survival.
The movie starts 89 days into the post-apocalyptic world, and it doesn’t waste any time showing us how the world got destroyed or giving any unnecessary backstories. After the death of her little brother, Regan (Millicent Simmons) feels responsible and thinks her father holds her responsible as well. The movie jumps to about a year later, and Evelyn Abbott (the mom) is now pregnant, leaving the audience curious to see how a crying, boisterous baby will be brought into a world with absolutely no sound.
It seems things start to happen at the worst possible time. Evelyn starts to go into labor as the Dad (John Krasinski), son (Noah Jupe), and daughter are all out. The mother is doing laundry and accidentally steps on a nail, dropping everything she’s carrying. With shocks of pain littered on her face we then see one of the monsters inside her house. Then her water breaks, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time. The audience is captivated by this suspenseful scene as the aliens swarm the house while the mother goes into labor.
It seems at every corner there are no rests, and the movie is filled with suspense, after suspense, after suspense. There was no one scariest moment, with one scene as thrilling and terrifying as the next. The alien apocalypse doesn’t take any breaks, so why should you?
The best part of this movie had to be the beautiful camera work and the landscape of the dreary, post apocalyptic Earth. The camera angles and panels of the overgrown world so long after it ended is breathtaking and spectacular.
For a movie with so little dialogue, it’s amazing to see how we still end up falling in love with the characters. It really helps that the eldest daughter is deaf and the whole family knows sign language. The father is trying throughout the whole movie to make hearing aids for the daughter to cure her deafness. Gathering spare parts from radios to project noise, he uses scientific books to help him. Trying to live without speech would be unbearable and they are doing a pretty fantastic job with it. Learning from textbooks and fishing in a nearby river, they get by pretty well.
Unlike most current horror movies, A Quiet Place is an exciting combination of Alien and Jurassic Park with all the suspense, intensity, and thrilling moments throughout the movie, keeping you on the edge of your seat for scene after scene.
