I'm going to start off by saying three negative things about the movie. There actually isn't a lot of scary scenes, it relies on jump scares with loud sounds to frighten you, and it uses too many stupid coincidental misfortunes to drive up the scare factor. This movie sounds like your typical disposable horror movie of the week right? It's not. Besides how I opened this review, I'm saying that "A Quiet Place" is definitely worth checking out.
The gimmick of this movie is that there is a huge lack of spoken lines here, and predominantly uses visual cues, sign language, plus subtitles to show us how the characters communicate with each other. There are still ambient noises and a musical score to accompany everything that happens, but for the most part the movie lives up to it's title. However, some might find themselves restless with the lack of dialogue, as it might feel like an odd experience watching a movie without much of that.
That gimmick is what makes this movie stand out on it's own among the rest, as there isn't many horror films like this. Like the silent films of the past, this movie relies predominantly on the visuals to move things along, and it does so wonderfully. There's also an increase level of tension to the tone of the movie, as there is this constant anticipation of wondering when a sound is going to draw in the monsters. That constant threat of death is just a sound away, and that can be terrifying. While the scares can be questionably scary, don't be surprised if you're on the edge of your seat the whole time you're seeing this.
Although there are some elements of world building and character development that I can appreciate, the movie simply hinges on us caring that this family survives the experience. I have my own little gripes about certain characters in the family, and some of the questionable plot developments involving them, but I did feel invested enough in wanting to see them make it through the day. With such minimalist methods of exposition, kudos to this movie for still being able to convey a lot of story and character details worth paying attention to.
With a confident direction by John Krasinski, strong performance by the cast, and a cool idea of a horror movie, this is surely an experience worth taking. I got to say though, watching "A Quiet Place" in a crowded movie theater is fascinating as well, as it almost seemed like the audience were even more silent than they normally would be, just in case the monster gets them.
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