A Quiet Place

A great idea which sweetened the horror waters of the year 2018. A movie where there is little talking, because it’s set in a dystopian world with an extraterrestrial civilization that destroys everything that speaks aloud. There is a whole array of logical errors, but the simplicity and originality overshadow the contents. The suspense is literally spouting from the movie and the married couple Emily Blunt and John Karsinski are truly enjoying this family horror drama. Just like the viewer, after all. Only from a slightly different perspective. (10/11/2018)

Last of Us meets Walking Dead meets Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds. Despite the fact that Krasinski always veers from serious tones to slightly cheesy progressions and twists, this quiet elegy gripped me from the first to the last minute. That's how Shyamalan would have done it if he hadn't gone crazy. (04/24/2018)

A Quiet Place has such a terribly well-constructed world, such a brilliantly layered narrative and such precisely built tension that one does not want to spoil it with nitpicking and cynical remarks. And there would be a number of them, the first of which being how suicidal it is to walk through this world with a spoiled teenager around one’s neck. However, that is not the case here and similar comments show defects in us rather than in the film. A Quiet Place may faulter in particular mishaps, but its power comes from its excellently thought-out world and its presentation through narration. And just like a slice of life from this unique world, the film is absorbing and fascinating. (05/16/2020)

The main couple’s decision to bring a (crying) baby into the world that the movie creates for them in order for A Quiet Place to work as a suspenseful horror flick ruined it for me. The very opening scene of the walk through the woods, in which the parents let their youngest child walk unattended far behind them, indicated that there would be no hint of even basic common sense. Normally, such nonsense in movies doesn’t bother me, but here the key events in the storyline went totally AGAINST the sophistication of the director’s building of tension stemming from an interesting idea. It was painful to endure the stupidity of this movie, which I was looking forward to and which could (or should) have been perfectly to my taste. (10/04/2018)

A straightforward family survival spiced up with one interesting variation (the motif of silence, even if it’s not exploited to the its fullest) that is tense rather than scary. The first half is held up by that one idea and great craftsmanship, but the second half is brought down by silliness and breaking the rules the film has laid down. It’s a bit of a problem when at the beginning we are told the monsters are sensitive to the tiniest crack, but during the chase at the end, their sensitivity works in any way that is convenient to the script. Why, for example, in a key moment the boy runs into a corn field is something I can’t make any sense of (I’ve never run into a corn field, but I guess it would be pretty noisy). And the second half is full of moments like this. The monsters are unfortunately shown way too often and they look disappointing, like run of the mill creatures that seem to have fallen out of a Marvel movie (the typical alien minions of the main villain that are there so the super heroes will have something to fight). Although I sound critical, A Quiet Place is an above average film, thanks mainly to the quality of its craftsmanship and the performances. With regards to the horror, at the time of release (April) it will hardly reach this year’s TOP 3 and the comments of it being the best horror film in the last years are totally unwarranted. (05/13/2018)