In this film, silence and thus all minimal sounds, play a huge part in creating an almost excruciating tense environment. The audience is ask to participate as the monster – the monsters in this movie are monsters, there’s no doubt about that – hunts with sound. I was aware of this movie’s existence for a while, but I definitely did not want to subject myself to going to a theatre and trusting a modern day audience to be quiet.
John Krasinski directs and stars in A Quiet Place, a movie where dystopian life has one added pressing matter: humanity has been hunted down by tireless predatory creatures that track you down by sound. As a result, you must be completely silent all the time. The premise permeates the film which only has briefs moments of peace where the soundtrack dares to add some minimal music scoring. Once the silent is broken by unexpected trivial accidents, the soundtrack goes silent and you can tell the hunt is on.
Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and Lee (John Krasinski) live an almost idyllic life in a post-apocalyptic world where they farm the land, raise two kids and search through survivors via morse code on the radio. Evelyn still blames herself for the loss of one of their children. Regan (Millicent Simmonds), their older daughter, wants to learn more about the world but Lee worries that without the gift of hearing she’s impaired to know when she can be in danger. Marcus (Noah Jupe) would rather stay home, but reluctantly follows his dad as he tries to teach him how to survive outside their compound.
The film has extremely clever moments and blatantly obvious ones. We know that Regan being deaf is not incidental and will be key to the plot. So is the fact that Evelyn is pregnant and although they seem to have taken most precautions things can go wrong in the blink of an eye. There’s a few classic moments of kids being careless where you want to shout at the screen but almost feel you can’t. The silence is very effective, specially if you choose to watch this with noise-cancelling headphones.
Highly recommended for fans of horror and suspense, specially if you appreciate movies that build up. The slow burn works better in this case, where you’re already aware but there’s nothing that you can do. The movie understands how to craft a scary situation and keeps you on the edge of your seat for most of its runtime. This one might work better without a crowd than with one.
That will do for now.
Never Think Impossible 