A calm thriller
A Quiet Place is open about its premise, but sparing with the details. In the very near future, a species of large, seemingly unkillable spider-like monsters appears and wipes out most of humanity. While the creatures are blind, their hearing is so keen that a shattering plate, the thump of boots, or any speech above a whisper could draw them. A few humans survive, including a nameless couple played by Krasinski and Emily Blunt (who are married in real life). The pair retreats to a farmhouse with their son (Noah Jupe) and daughter (Millicent Simmonds), and when they conceive another child, they begin making elaborate preparations for the nigh-impossible task of raising the baby.
The filmmakers mostly don’t artificially amplify or silence the world, but characters are so quiet that any sound at ordinary volume becomes a jump scare. The family communicates with sign language, and they’ve rearranged every part of their environment to reduce noise. Footpaths are covered in sand and traversed barefoot. Plates are replaced by leaves of lettuce. Metal and plastic Monopoly tokens are swapped with felt cutouts and fuzzy balls. Hanging over all of it, they’re bearing the guilt of a single devastating failure: the death of the family’s second son, who was taken after turning on a loud toy in the forest.
A Quiet Place follows a relatively predictable horror arc, and it relies on familiar tropes for its scares. (It’s arguably a feature-length extension of the stock scene where a character hides in a closet and tries not to scream.) This strategy works for most of the film, when the point is just to make the viewers as tense as the characters by any means necessary.
A Quiet Place is unique high-concept science fiction that’s grounded solidly in human drama. Some horror movies imbue a seemingly harmless place or object with newfound danger. A Quiet Place may not make audiences afraid of wearing shoes or talking — but it might make those things feel luxurious, however momentarily.
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