300 Words on "A Quiet Place" (2018)

I can’t remember the last time I was in a movie theater that was so silent.

A Quiet Place is, simply put, a triumph of modern horror, avoiding so many of the worn-out tropes of the genre and telling a unique, character-driven story. The film seems to affirm my belief that the very best horror movies are the ones which are built upon the simplest of plots, and storylines do not get much simpler than a family (quietly) fighting for their lives against monsters which hunt them through sound.

It is not the monsters, however, that makes A Quiet Place such riveting viewing: it’s the tightly-written script by John Krasinski (who also directs and stars alongside his real-life wife, Emily Blunt) which leans upon suspenseful set-pieces to tremendous affect. Seldom has the upsetting of a lantern, the creaking of floorboards, or the ticking of a simple egg-timer elicited such thrills from an audience who were undoubtedly anxiously chewing their fingernails just as much as I was.

The film’s screenplay also strongly built up the characters of the family and from the outset they emerged as likable, empathic characters whose plight we feel for. Of course, this is almost entirely done visually, so much of the movie carried out in virtual silence. A masterclass of visual storytelling in an age when so many movies rely on exposition-laden dialogue to convey its ideas, the silence of A Quiet Place not only sets it apart from so many other mainstream films today but managed to subvert the horror genre trope of the loud-noise jump scare and make it feel justified and rightfully scary. Even if the acting, direction, beautiful cinematography from Charlotte Bruus Christensen, and brilliant sound design were not as excellent as they were, A Quiet Place would still be a very clever horror film.

And that, in itself, may have been enough to stun some into silence.