It’s been a while since I’ve seen a more satisfyingly scary movie than A Quiet Place. Director John Krasinski proves an economical story-teller – with essentially no dialogue, he helps us learn the set-up in few minutes. The earth has been overrun by man-eating monsters, who are blind but have a super-acute sense of hearing. Anyone who makes noise is immediately eaten by a monster. There aren’t many human survivors, but one family is holding out on their remote farm – a dad (Krasinski), a mom (Krasinski’s real life wife Emily Blunt), a daughter who is eleven or twelve and a son who is a year younger.
They walk only barefoot, speak only in sign language, and have devised ways to do every possible task silently. However, the mom is pregnant; childbirth and babies tend to be noisy, so there’s a ticking time bomb element to the story.
In fact, the characters (and we) are in a state of intensely heightened alertness during the entire movie – except for when a monster shows up and plunges us into outright terror. Mercifully, the gore and splatter happen off-screen, but the monster is plenty scary, and it hunts the family members at the closest of quarters and when they are at their most vulnerable. I saw A Quiet Place in a theater, and the audience stayed in a state of tense silence – like we were all afraid to make any noise by gasping or shrieking.
Each family member blames himself or herself for the loss of the third and youngest child, so there’s also an element of family drama in A Quiet Place. Krasinski and Blunt are excellent, and the kid actors (Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe) are, too.
I’m not a big horror movie fan, but I enjoyed and admired A Quiet Place.
