Review: A Quiet Place is a Suspense Masterpiece

The trailer for A Quiet Place was one of the most intense we’ve seen in years, probably the scariest trailer since the one for The Conjuring turned that low-key horror film into a monster hit. But does the film deliver on the promise of its excellent preview?

In a word: absolutely.

Starring real-life husband and wife John Krasinski and Emily Blunt (and directed by Krasinski), A Quiet Place works on multiple levels. As a straight horror thriller, it’s incredibly visceral, tense, and exciting. But if you happen to be a parent, the film takes on a whole new level of subtext, as the idea of having to protect your own children in a world that is out to kill them is the stuff of parental nightmares.

The premise is simple: after an (presumably alien) invasion by heavily armored creatures that hunt solely by sound, a family tries to survive against overwhelming odds. To say more would be to ruin the fun, but this isn’t a film driven by plot. It takes place mostly over just a couple of days, as a series of events shatters the quiet and brings the creatures to our family’s front door.

Now, generally, I try to avoid crowds at movie theaters, but in this case, I can’t recommend seeing this movie in a crowded theater highly enough. I saw it on opening night, in a packed house, and the experience was magical. This is a film with large swaths of silence, during which the tension ratchets ever higher and higher. I’ve never heard (or not heard, more accurately) a crowd that was so into a movie. Nobody dared make a sound: no candy bags crinkling, no popcorn munching, nobody getting up to go the bathroom, no cell phones making noise. The only breaks came from the audible gasps, laughs, shouts, and screams as the events on screen made us jump out of our seats.

People looking for a complex story or overly-developed characters will probably come away from this film a little disappointed. Personally, I appreciated the streamlined nature of the film. It tells a very particular chapter in a much larger story, but that’s part of what I loved so much about it. Blunt and Krasinksi give absolutely stellar performances, and the child actors who populate the film are all really good as well. The top-notch acting on screen elevates the film above just a typical horror thriller.

For my money, A Quiet Place is one of the better films I’ve seen in quite some time, and certainly one of the best horror movies (although I hesitate to assign it that label) I’ve seen in years. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!