A Quiet Place (2018) - Review

Few films utilize sound in such an effective way as A Quiet Place. Evoking terror, intensity, sadness and love, the emphasis placed on sound in this film evidences how impactful this often-overlooked part of filmmaking can be.

In A Quiet Place, director John Krasinski stars alongside his real-life wife Emily Blunt as parents who are forced to live an utterly silent life with their children in an effort to survive from monsters who prey on sound. When Blunt brings a baby to term, the family faces the toughest night of their life.

What brings the movie head and shoulders above other thrillers of the same type is the way Krasinski uses sound to its utmost potential. Every loud breath and every creaky step ratchets up the tension throughout the film. The majority of the movie features no dialogue, instead opting for sign language for the characters to communicate. The times when characters do vocalize serve two purposes: to evoke love and warmth, or to evoke utter horror. No sound is wasted, and this unique approach is the greatest strength of the film.

The acting is also surprisingly superb. Without the use of dialogue, child actors Millicent Simmonds (who is actually deaf in real life) and Noah Jupe are lock-step with Kransinski and Blunt. While I am generally not a fan of child actors due to their often wooden cadence, the facials tell the story and avoid that problem. Krasinski fully sheds his comic typecast for me with this performance, showing intense regret and pain underneath the determined exterior of the patriarch. Blunt is great as well, but her screen time is mostly limited to being scared of a nearby creature, which only allows for so much range.

Speaking of the creatures, the design is notable and worth mentioning. They are appropriately alien yet familiarly insectoid. The click-clack noise they emit is delightful. The CGI is fairly weak by today's Hollywood standards, though the dark lighting mostly covers that until the final act. I also appreciated that the monsters are relegated to more of a "Jaws" treatment than a Kaiju depiction. We hardly see the monsters except for brief glimpses, until the final act. This both masks the poor visual effects, and emphasises the characters relationships over the spectacle of the creatures.

A Quiet Place takes a predictable formula ,but presents it in an innovative way. Couple that with the heart and familial love brought to screen by Krasinski, Blunt, Simmonds and Jupe, and this tense thriller is worth a watch at FULL PRICE!