“… already I know that it’s going to be a movie that I hate becasue of the fans.”

Last night I saw A Quiet Place and already I know that it’s going to be a movie that I hate becasue of the fans. A Quiet Place is the new horror film directed by John Krasinski wherein a family has to survive in a world that has been taken over by creatures who hunt by sound. This means that a lot of the movie doesn’t have dialogue, but that doesn’t mean its silent.

What A Quiet Place has going for it is intensity. It does a god job of raising tensions, and keeping them elevated for extended periods of time. But this doesn’t happen automatically. After setting up the plot of the movie, A Quiet Place takes its time to really give you a slice of life of the characters. We see them hunt, do laundry, really just live. And this is fine, but in my opinion it went on a little too long. Now this isn’t to say that the movie dragged, as a matter of fact A Quiet Place was one of the better paced movies I have seen in a while. A part of this reason is that it kept itself focused on one story. A Quiet Place didn’t try to explain where these creatures came from, and it didn’t try to save the world from them. It was just about a single family trying their best to survive. This allowed for a wonderfully crafted, succinct story that made the runtime fly by.

But it wasn’t all brilliance in A Quiet Place, becasue there were quite a few instances of either lazy/clichéd writing or plot holes. I don’t really want to go into that here for fear of spoiling the movie, but just know that these moments were there. They didn’t always take me out of the movie, but once again becasue this film is being built up so much by fans I’m subconsciously trying my best to take it down one piece at a time. I have to say,  completely unbiasedly, that I didn’t like the ending. It took a suspenseful movie and tried to make it an action movie; and it didn’t work. I will say that out of the few audio-centred horror movies we’ve had (Hush, Don’t Breathe), A Quiet Place was the most enjoyable. I really liked the creature design, even if they were a little generic. I don’t think that’s a fault of the movie, more a fault of other movies being released all generally using similar designs (humanoid, grey, fleshy inside, clicking noises, etc.). There were a few instances of shaky CGI, but once again it was nothing to take me out of the movie completely. I do wish that there would have been less of an emphasis on ‘showing the shark’, but that’s just me. I will say that I thought the performances were really great, especially having to convey so much emotion without that much sound; but that being said a lot of John Krasinski’s performance can be summed up as such: all of a sudden he stops and his eyes go wide as a single finger is lifted to his lips to indicate to everyone else to stay quiet. I was also a huge fan of the score of the film, which brings me back to main point: A Quiet Place wasn’t silent. Everyone is praising it as though it is the second coming of the silent film, but there was plenty of noise. The only thing it didn’t have was consistent dialogue, but most times dialogue was there. You just had to listen for the whispers of the characters as they were narrating what they were signing.

I know that A Quiet Place is going to get a lot of unjust hate becasue it’s getting too much love; that’s just how the internet works. But before my judgement is clouded too much by threads on Reddit, let me say this: I thoroughly enjoyed A Quiet Place. Is it flawless? No. It did have some issues that hindered its greatness. But there wasn’t a single moment where I wasn’t enjoying myself when watching it. And isn’t that what movies should be?

I give A Quiet Place an A