SILVER TONGUED SILVER SCREEN: A QUIET PLACE (2018)

The last few horror films I've seen in theaters have been of a similar thread: Annabelle Creation, IT, Insidious The Last Key, and The Shape Of Water. With the exception of the last film on that list, most of the horror films I've been seeing in recent years have been mining the same vein. And they are rich veins as I have really enjoyed all of them. Then there's outliers like Get Out that provide an alternative. Horror cinema seems to be in a really strong place right now. At least from what I've seen. I can't speak about last year's Happy Death Day, this year's Winchester, Truth or Dare, or The Strangers: Prey at Night. Wow, I've missed a few... and I almost missed this next one.

Premiering the first week of April 2018, you could say I am last to the party when talking about the biggest horror film of the year so far, A QUIET PLACE. At first glance the film feels like a mix of Predator, The Walking Dead, and Signs (all good movies/shows in my book). The project appears to be somewhat of a personal mission for writer/director/actor/executive producer John Krasinski. You could say he pulled a "John Carpenter" by doing virtually everything necessary to get this movie made, even employing his own wife in the process.

And I'm glad he did because this movie was good. Really good. Well thought out and well executed.

THE PLOT

The world has been overrun by monsters. Blind fleshing eating creatures with super hearing and seemingly unkillable. The only way to survive is to live in complete silence. After only a few months the human population has been decimated. The Abbott family are among the few to have managed to stay alive. After living for a year and a half in fear the monsters have finally found them.

WHAT I LIKED

The Setups. Great horror movies take something basic in life and turn it on its head such as "what if your dreams killed you?" or "what if there was a monster that lived in the dark and you had to stay in the light to survive?" Take away one of the everyday aspects of life and see how one could survive. In A Quiet Place sound is the enemy. You make a sound and you die. Try living your entire life without making a sound? Now, what if you accidentally knocked over a glass? Or stepped on a nail? Or were in child birth? The film sets up these impossible moments where making a sound in almost inevitable and that's where the film soars.

The Scares. At the core of every horror film is the building of tension and maintaining suspense. And this film does that very successfully in my opinion.

The acting of course sells it even further. John Krasinski and Emily Blunt shoulder most of the burden and they do it very well. The child actors do a fairly good job too. Then there's the score by Marco Beltrami. Beltrami is a minimalist composer and usually (in my experience) his scores are fairly forgettable with a few exceptions. Here the score is still fairly minimal but Beltrami uses it to the fullest. Heavy strings and deep horns (forgive me, I'm not an expert on musical instruments) provided one chilling and dreadful soundtrack.

NITPICKS

The Monsters. I thought the monsters were fairly generic. They're not bad at all but they're not Pumpkinhead, Xenomorph, or Gill-Man. Given, the monsters I just named off are "The Icons" of monster cinema and it's kind of unfair to compare any monster to them, but I just wish their designs were stronger.

The Children. Arg! Children always irritate me in horror films. They're always acting stupid and getting either themselves or others killed before they learn what the adults have been telling them the whole freakin time! Rarely do we have a cast of children in movies that don't agitate me. But then, they're children, they forget or don't often realize the severity of situations even after telling them a hundred times. So... 'sigh' I guess its not bad but frustrating.

THE VERDICT

A Quiet Place takes relatively little and accomplishes much. Preying upon one of the everyday aspects of life we take for granted, the filmmakers show us how frightening the world could be if we couldn't make a sound. The scares are set up expertly and the tension and suspense are through the roof. If you're not a monster aficionado like myself or don't mind children being careless then this film nails it. This is one well done horror film.

Overall Ranking: 7 out of 10

Nude-O-Meter: 0 out of 10

For all of my horror film documentation make sure to peruse the 

THE HORROR MOVIE MASTER LIST

And be sure to check out these other horror films in similar veins to A Quiet Place

THE BLOB (1988)

BONE TOMAHAWK (2015)

THE CRAZIES (2010)

DARK WAS THE NIGHT (2015)

DON'T BREATHE (2016) 

  FEAST (2005)
LIGHTS OUT (2016)
PUMPKINHEAD (1988)
THE STRANGERS (2008)
THE WITCH ~ A NEW ENGLAND FOLKTALE (2015)