A Quiet Place is a tense American horror thriller movie directed by John Krasinski. The movie was released in 2018 and received appreciation from all around the world. Krasinski co-wrote the film with Bryan woods and Scott Beck. The film received many awards nominations, including the golden globe award for best original score, Producers Guild of America Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture, Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay. Emily Blunt also won Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role. A sequel with the name “A Quiet Place 2” is also in the making and is scheduled to release in September 2021.
The movie is about a family trying to raise a family in a world gone very, very wrong. A couple of Krasinski and Emily Blunt play an on-screen couple. They are also real-life partners. Along with their kids, they live in a world where even the slightest noise can kill them.
The year shown is 2020, and terrifying creatures almost destroy the world. They have ultra-sensitive hearing and kill even if the slightest noise is being made. These creatures are blind, and the only way they find humans is through the noise. A family has managed to escape them and lives at a farm, marinating a low profile. They have survived for over a year, but creatures have somehow located them and what happens next is the most thrilling part of the movie.
The film starts where we see Abbot Family starting day 89 since the deadly creatures invaded the planet. They do not have any idea if anyone else is also alive besides them. They maintain a no noise lifestyle where they cannot make even the slightest noise. They have learned sign language and communicate silently through hand gestures. The family walk on the soft sand pathways without shoes and marked safe walking zones on the floorboard to avoid any squeaks sounds. We see the abbot family walking to the town to collect some medicines and groceries. While returning, the youngest of children plays with a toy that attracts the deadly creatures, and he is taken away. The family is devastated by the loss, but Emily will soon give birth to the newest addition. She is 38 weeks pregnant. They are already preparing for the baby’s arrival. After all, babies are meant to be quiet. The family must contend with three deadly creatures lingering in the area while preparing for the soundless new arrival.
The plot of the movie is very straightforward. Krasinski did not create complications and confusion for the viewers like we mostly see in horror movies. The first shot of the film is shot in a deserted supermarket and on the roads establishing the silence and the sign language. We see the older daughter (the character played by Millicent Simmonds) is wearing a cochlear implant and is deaf. There are three children in the family, and soon there will be two.
The script of A Quiet Place is simple and wastes no time explaining the background. No meaningful information is provided about the creatures, where they have come from, how they got here and why they are eating humans. The film starts immediately, and we know that these creatures are sound sensitive and navigate through sound. If they hear you, you are gone forever. The main focus of the movie is on the brief encounters this family has with these creatures. All these encounters are predicted, but we do not know how and when they will happen. Whenever we know that another encounter end, we are engulfed in fear, which makes this movie unique.
With almost no dialogues, A Quiet Place mainly relies on visual storytelling. I must admit that Marco Beltrami did a fantastic job through the strings that scare us every time he played them. During the filming, the crew avoided making any sound so that the diegetic synchronized sounds can be recorded, such as the sound of a dice rolling in a game board, etc. All such sounds are amplified after the production. Krasinski wanted his audience to feel the film and not just watch a silent movie altogether.
As we have stated above, all the film characters used sign language to communicate with each other. They all used ASL (American Sign Language). Krasinski hired a deaf expert of ASl Douglas Ridloff to teach the characters. The deaf actress Millicent Simmonds is raised with ASL, and she also helped her co-actors to learn sign language. If we observe closely, we notice that each character has their sign language reflecting their motivation. For example, the father, Krasinski, has short and brief signs that show that he meant survival; the mother, Emily Blunt, has more complex sign language to show her motherly instinct, which wants the best for her kids.
The central idea of the film is full of tension. Every sound and every step is deadly, and the director used creative ways to play with sounds. None of these innovative intervention looks artificial because they are linked with characters through scripts. The deaf daughter does not know when she is making noise to attract the deadly creatures and puts herself in many dangerous situations. The wife is heavily pregnant, and we look forward to the birth as it cannot be quiet. Unlike other Krasinski’s movies, A Quiet Place is stellar. We see smooth slow performances and shots of the characters. Every situation has some element of danger in it, and we take a deep breath whenever a close encounter is avoided. Krasinski indeed did a great job creating unyielding suspense as it makes an intense sense of anticipation and horror. He sustains our involvement in the movie for 90 minutes.
A Quiet Place is graced by some solid performances which cinema lovers will remember. Not only the female cast, Emily, and Simmonds gave the best performance, but also Krasinski himself left no stone unturned and gave a much stronger performance of his career.
