“A Quiet Place” is the second thing based around silence that John Krasinski has been in — see “The Office” season 8, episode 11 for the first one. Both are great pieces of screen work, but I have to give the first place medal to “A Quiet Place” for the way it terrified me and did not contain any characters named Andy Bernard.
In all seriousness, “A Quiet Place” is a fantastic film that subverts its supposed genre by having characters that you can identify with and situations that feel real and true, despite the fact that aliens who hunt by sound have taken over the world. It is a terrifying concept — a fact driven home to me as I stepped out of the movie theater with a crowd of almost completely silent people and watched the collective wince as a theater attendant asked in a loud voice if he could take our trash.
Krasinski stars alongside his wife, Emily Blunt, as Lee and Evelyn Abbot, though their names are not mentioned in the film. Millicent Simmonds, a deaf child actor, gives the most compelling performance of the movie as Lee and Evelyn’s daughter, Regan. She is joined by Noah Jupe, who plays her younger brother Marcus. The film depicts the family’s silent life in a hostile world, where every motion is taken with absolute care for fear of knocking something over and the primary form of communication is sign language. The monsters — a few subtle hints point to them being aliens — can hear incredibly small sounds, right down to the sound of a running raccoon.
There is a very real tension that the film creates, so much so that I wanted to lean down to the guy in front of me that was digging loudly through his popcorn bucket and say, “Shut up! They’ll hear.” The notion quickly faded, but throughout the film, I could not shake the feeling that I had to be absolutely silent. Of course, a measure of silence is expected of people in a movie theater, but this time was different. This time I was scared of breathing too loudly. I know that sounds ridiculous, and maybe it is because I do not watch very many horror films.
More important than the silence-induced tension the film created, was when it chose to break the silence. There are a few comparatively loud moments throughout the film and they are so well paced out as to give the audience members with less experience with horror movies time to breath. The movie was well paced throughout, but the few moments of higher volume were especially thoughtful.
Perhaps the best thing about “A Quiet Place” is that it is not really about the horror or even defeating the aliens. It has room for those things, yes, but the most important driving force in the film is parental love. Everything the parents do in the film is for their children, from painting marks on the floor where the wood will not creak to going to a noisy waterfall so that you can just have a time to let loose and scream. It nearly made me cry — not a “crying because I am so scared” cry, but a “this is wonderful and sad and happy and surprisingly emotionally deep” cry. That is not to say that I was not so scared I could have cried during the movie. I was. But once again, I have not seen many horror movies.
