Disclaimer: I tried to praise A Quiet Place as much as I could without giving too much away. Being thrown into the middle of the story, everything has a potential to be a spoiler. Still, I hope I gave it justice.
I am a huge fan of the horror genre. I have read too many Stephen King books to count and I love horror video games and television shows. I love the adrenaline rush given by scares and suspense and the feeling of not knowing what’s coming next. I love the idea that there is more out there than we can ever imagine. However, I am not a fan of horror movies. I actually hate them. Modern horror movies have become campy, cliché, teen dramas which are quite honestly boring to me. These days, horror movies are simply lame and follow the same basic plot. So for me to say that John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place was one of the best pieces of horror I have witnessed is big.
A Quiet Place takes place in a post apocalyptic wasteland sometime in the near future. The audience is dropped into the middle of the story, day 89 after the disaster, with no exposition; everything learned about the monsters is learned from notes and newspaper clippings. The narrative follows a family of four as they try to survive an alien invasion. The aliens can’t see but rely on an advanced sense of hearing. The film poses the question: is it possible to live normally in this sort of environment?
In this situation, silence means survival. Still, the family goes on doing normal things. Before meals they hold hands and bow their heads, assumedly saying a silent prayer. There is a scene of the two children playing Monopoly, rolling the dice on a carpet and using small pieces of felt as game pieces. What gives this family an advantage is that the oldest daughter, played by Millicent Simmonds, is deaf. The family communicates through American Sign Language (with subtitles for those of us who don’t know ASL), which they would have known before the apocalypse. They live on the family farm, where they have removed doors and painted on the wood floors where it is safe to walk without the floorboards squeaking. They have lights strung up around the property which can be switched from white to red in case of emergency. They have learned how to live completely silently.
This silence is what makes A Quiet Place so groundbreaking. Horror movies today are full of screams and other loud noises. They rely on loud sounds to scare the audience. This movie is the opposite. Save for two scenes, the characters don’t talk; the only sound is background noise. This makes every small sound- for example, raccoons jumping off a roof or a lantern tipping over- terrifying. The silence that follows as you are listening for the call of the aliens is worse. When one character knocked over a lantern, I could feel my heart stop and didn’t breathe through the two-minute silence that followed.
Something else the movie does well is scaring the audience. Modern movies are full of jumpscares accompanied by a loud noise to “scare” the audience. What horror filmmakers get wrong is the difference between being startled and being scared. Jumpscares startle; they make you jump but then you move on. A Quiet Place, however, is scary. The anticipation that is built from knowing that something is going to go wrong, but not knowing when or how, is what provides this fear. There is an underlying sense of dread as you watch the family try to live normally. Throughout the film, I was on the edge of my seat, barely breathing, heart pounding, waiting for something to go horribly wrong.
For the first time in a long time, something from the horror genre made me cry. In modern horror, the characters are beautiful despite the dirt and blood. The characters in A Quiet Place didn’t look good; they were dirty, their hair was a mess, and it was obvious they were in a post apocalyptic world. They were raw, unafraid to cry. They were human. Especially the parents, played by John Krasinski (yes, he’s Jim from The Office) and his real-life wife Emily Blunt, provided a feeling of hopelessness and desperation as they did everything they could to keep their children safe. The love between the two was evident even without words, which is probably aided by their real marriage. You can feel a connection with the characters, despite never hearing them speak or even learning their names.
This movie is also important because it has a deaf actress playing a main role. Deaf characters are not common in today’s media, and this representation was very important for deaf actress, Millicent Simmonds. For the family in the film, their daughter’s deafness is the reason for their survival. When asked, director John Krasinski said he wanted a deaf actress “… for many reasons, I didn’t want a non-deaf actress pretending to be deaf. Most importantly though, because a deaf actress would help my knowledge and my understanding of the situations tenfold. I wanted someone who lives it and who could teach me about it on set.” Millicent Simmonds said that “John was a great director and cared about my opinions and really wanted my input about how Regan (her character) would act in this world… For a director I think it’s important to understand everyone’s perspective — and John did that. I hope seeing people like me on screen inspires more people to chase their own dreams, and shows deaf kids anything is a possibility for them because I really don’t feel like my deafness was an obstacle or should be a big deal. I’m an actress. I’m also deaf. I like to read. There’s a lot more to me than just being deaf.”
The cinematography was unique and beautiful, with long shots of empty houses and environment to show just how much the invasion has affected humanity. One of my favorite cinematic elements in the movie was showing what the characters heard as they walked, the soft footsteps and sounds of nature, but when the camera panned to the daughter there was only silence. This happened about three times in the film, and every time it was amazing.
This movie was one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. It was unique and emotional, but also scary. It may not technically be a horror movie (it’s labeled as a “Sci-Fi Drama/Thriller”), but the element is definitely there. This is a movie that I will be recommending to everyone. Stephen King, the “Master of Horror” himself, tweeted that A Quiet Place “is an extraordinary piece of work. Terrific acting, but the main thing is the SILENCE, and how it makes the camera’s eye open wide in a way few movies manage.” This is an assessment that I agree with wholeheartedly.