Be Reel: A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place Produced a Loud Response

The newest and wildly successful thriller film, A Quiet Place, is topping the box offices in its premiere week, and for good reason. The hit movie was directed by the popular actor John Krasinski, who also starred in the film, alongside his real-life wife Emily Blunt. The movie follows a family who is living in a world that has been overcome by alien life forms who hunt by sound. Kransinski plays the husband/father Lee Abbott, who presents himself as the leader or protector of the family, with Blunt, who plays Evelyn Abbott, takes on more of the caretaker role. Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe play the roles of Reagan and Marcus Abbott, the primary children of the family, while two other children make short, minor apperences within the movie. To be completely upfront, I thought this movie great. I thought it was very well made, the idea was completely origional, and the acting was superb. I have never been a fan of horror/thriller movies and never goto the movie theater to see them. However, with A Quiet Place, from the very first time a watched the trailer, I was hooked. I was just so fascinated with the idea that this family was stuck living in silence, in constant fear that the slightest sound would cost them their lives. This was so unlike the ¨typical¨ horror movies I was so used to hearing about. I think another big part of why I enjoyed this film was because, more than anything, more than the monster in the movie, this movie was about a family and their survival. You easily become attatched to this family and worry for their wellbeing and this becomes the overall concern of the viewer throughout the movie.

I believe both the attention to detail and the acting go hand in hand with making this film so good. I thought that, since this film uses minimal dialouge, it would be hard to communicate the plot and such, but the film definetly proved me wrong. The audience is never explicitly told why they cant make sound, so we had to figure this out on our own. The first scene is able to display this when we see the youngest child, Beau, killed by the creature after turning on the toy rocket. The film was able to answer many questions and implicitly communicate to the audience things that we should know, like for example when we see the father on top of the silo lighting the fire at dusk, the camera then pans out across the mountanous terrain to see other fires being ignited, which tells the viewer that the Abbott family is not alone in this silent world.

A movie can have the most creative and brillient topic, but if the acting is not up to par, it can ruin the entire thing. With A Quiet Place, the acting was able to really enhance the overall experience of the film. Everyones acting was great, but I personally think that Emily Blunt was incredible in this film. Her acting was very convinvcing, especially in the bathtub scene, where her acting was so emotional an powerful. Also, the daughter in the film was deaf, and the girl who played her was also deaf, which I thought was able to make her character even more convincing and natural. Overall, I went in to see this movie with high expectations, and I was most definently not dissapointed. I have really never watched or enjoyed the idea of horror movies, but this one was different, and is among my favorite movies.

Based on your interest in:

Get Out (Good, Good)

Cloverfield (Good, Good)

The Invitation (Bad, Good)

Alien (Bad, Bad)