Total silence is something very hard to achieve in our daily lives. Even when we are alone, we tend to make noises when grabbing objects, walking, occasionally tripping over, etc. Some people spend a good amount of time and energy trying to achieve peaceful silence. Imagine, then, living in a world when the smallest sound could mean almost instant death by an alien creature.

That is the world in A Quiet Place, where Lee (John Krasinski) and Evelyn (Emily Blunt) live with their children. Without explaining what happened, the movie starts with a city already devastated and the couple in a deserted supermarket with their children: they communicate only with signs and tip-toe around, barefoot, grabbing some essential items. As they leave the supermarket, their youngest son (Cade Woodward) makes a sound and a tragedy happens.

One year later, we meet the family again and Evelyn is pregnant, which adds an element of tension to their lives: if they can’t even talk among themselves, how would they handle a crying infant?

Meanwhile, they keep living as normally as they possibly can, and the fact that their daughter (Millicent Simmonds) is deaf, so the whole family already knew sign language before the unknown monsters invaded the world.

During the first half of the movie, we don’t really see the creatures, but rather undefined figures running around as soon as a sound is made. When we finally see them, it’s clear they don’t have eyes and have a very developed hearing system, which is as terrifying as you might think. 

With so few characters in A Quiet Place, the main one is actually not a person, but the sound itself – or the lack of it. The score by Marco Beltrami basically dictates when something will happen and the whole audience falls every time something scary takes place. The silence is also deafening, and it feels like you can’t even breath, fearing something terrible might happen. The total silence happens mainly when we see the story from Millicent Simmonds’ character’s perspective (she is also deaf in real life).

Directed by John Krasinski, who is working for the first time with his wife Emily Blunt, A Quiet Place is a great and effective horror movie, with a good running time of 90 minutes, which leaves no room for useless plot lines.

A Quiet Place proves that silence, when coerced, is the perfect exemplification of pure fear.

Related posts:

Review: A Quiet Place – Part II Best Movies of 2018 Review: Christopher Robin (2018) Review: The Florida Project (2017)

Powered by YARPP.