A Quiet Place is a 2018 American science fiction horror film directed by John Krasinski, who stars with Emily Blunt, his real-life wife. The film is produced by Michael Bay’s company, Platinum Dunes, Principal photography took place later in the year in upstate New York. In A Quiet Place, a family must live life in silence while hiding from extraterrestrial creatures that hunt by sound.
So that’s the premise of this film, which starts on day 89 of the attack. We don’t get to see how the alien creatures landed or we sent to earth and how the destruction started and wiped out almost everyone on earth, including most of the animal life. But there is this one family – dad Lee, mom Evelyn, older deaf & mute daughter Regan, sons Marcus & youngest Beau. They are scavenging supplies in a store and head on their way. Beau plays with a toy spacecraft which he finds in the store and he turns it on – a few seconds later he is killed by one of the creatures before Lee can get to him.
First of all, in this kinda situation why would you have your family walk single file, with the dad carrying the older son, mom just behind him, then the oldest kid and the small kid walking way at the back of the line? That is just asking for him to do something silly (like little kids would do) and get himself kid! It’s bad parenting! Over a year later they live in a farm in the countryside and Evelyn is pregnant and is due. Lee takes Marcus fishing with him and tells him, they can talk next to the waterfall and sound of falling water as the aliens won’t hear them talking softly as the louder noise will distract them. Ofcourse this is also the time when Evelyn has to go into labour and walking down the steps she steps on a sharp nail and drops a lantern.
This alerts a creature nearby & Evelyn hides but flips a switch that changes the exterior house lights to red as a danger signal to the others, and struggles to remain silent during her contractions. Marcus & Lee runs into an old man, who screams after his wife’s body is found and is killed by a creature. A chase happens in the end where a creature is tracking Evelyn, while another hunts Regan. Lee comes to the house, leaving Marcus with some fireworks, which he fires to distract the creatures. Regan and Marcus are chased to a grain silo where the creature attacks them Regan’s cochlear implant reacts to the proximity of the creature by emitting a piercingly loud high-frequency sound that drives it away. The children escape from the silo and reunite with Lee.
Lee sacrifices himself to save his kids and escape to meet mom and the new baby. When the creature returns to invade the basement, Regan, who realizes that the sound made by the implant distresses the creature, switches the device back on and places it on a nearby microphone, magnifying the feedback. Painfully disoriented, the creature exposes the flesh beneath its armored head, which Evelyn shoots, killing it. The family views a CCTV monitor, showing two creatures attracted by the noise of the shotgun blast approaching the house. With their newly acquired knowledge of the creatures’ weakness, the members of the family arm themselves and prepare to fight back.
While the storyline is unique, using silence and sign language to great effect, less backstory leaves me a bit baffled as to how come almost everyone else is dead and no other signs of civilization seemed to have survived. Where did the alien creatures come from, how did they get here, who sent them and set them loose on our planet? The horror is genuinely fresh and the kids do a great job. 7.5 outta 10!