A Quiet Place (2018) Review

Time: 95 Minutes
Age Rating: Contains violence, horror scenes & content that may disturb
Cast:
Emily Blunt as Evelyn Abbott
John Krasinski as Lee Abbott
Millicent Simmonds as Regan Abbott
Noah Jupe as Marcus Abbott
Cade Woodward as Beau Abbott
Director: John Krasinski

A family is forced to live in silence while hiding from creatures that hunt by sound.

I was growing curious of A Quiet Place in the lead up to its release. From what knew beforehand, John Krasinski directed and co-wrote a horror movie, and starred in it alongside Emily Blunt. It had a simple, yet unique premise, which is heavily based around not making any sound. So I was looking forward to seeing what Krasinski and co. had in store for us. A Quiet Place was even better than I thought it would be and it definitely lived up to its premise and the well deserved hype its been receiving.

A Quiet Place is about an hour and 30 minutes long and it was the right length overall. From beginning to end, it had me really interested in what was going on. It is not very scare heavy in the first half of the movie (even though it has it’s fair amount of moments) but I think that’s good. A Quiet Place isn’t just a horror movie, at it’s core its still about a family trying to survive and you really care about what’s happening with them as they are up against many odds. The tension was also held pretty consistently, even in calmer scenes there’s always a feeling that not everything is okay. And of course the tension is really amped up in the last act. If there’s one issue I might have, it would be the ending. I wouldn’t say its bad but it is something that I’m not exactly sure of how I feel yet. Without spoiling anything, it is something I’ll have to think about.

Most of the time, the actors don’t speak but they conveyed so much without saying anything through their body language and expressions, they were all great. John Krasinski and Emily Blunt are great in the lead roles and share great chemistry as the parents of the family (of course, those two being married in real life really helped with that). The children played by Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe were also quite good in their roles. On another note, I’d like to acknowledge that they cast an actual deaf actress (Millicent Simmonds) as the deaf daughter of John and Emily, definitely a decision that is worth praising. All of them together felt like a real family, which was an important aspect of the film that needed to be done well.

John Krasinski did a great job directing this film. On top of A Quiet Shot being well shot and edited, it’s also an effectively scary movie. Yes, there are some jump scares in the movie but it actually feels earned and not just put in just for a cheap scare, and the jump scares are actually used effectively. The creatures that hunt the main characters were creepy and unnerving, not only because of their freakish design, but the sounds that were used for them were very unnerving. This brings me to one of the most stand out parts of the film, which is the use of sound, which is so essential to a movie built around the idea of not making any sound to survive. This movie really is worth experiencing in the theatre because you can appreciate how silent the majority of the movie is (assuming of course the people in your theatre don’t make any noise), it really is engrossing and captivating. Any small sounds that in most movies wouldn’t mean too much suddenly mean a lot here, because we know the stakes and thus just builds up the tension even more. The music by Marco Beltrami was quite effective during the more intense scenes, though I will admit that I am curious about how the movie would’ve been without any music, because it was effective enough without the music.

A Quiet Place was quite a surprisingly great film and also one of the best horror movies in recent years. It was fantastically directed, greatly acted and the scares and the horror were really effective. John Krasinski has done an incredible job with this movie and I hope to see him direct more films like this in the future. If you like horror movies, this is definitely one to check out whenever you can, especially in the cinemas.

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