A Quiet Place Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews

A Quiet Place

Okay so I know I still have to review Ready Player One and Isle of Dogs, as I saw both of those earlier this month. For now though I saw A Quiet Place and I'm honestly not going to be able to cogently write words about those other two movies until I get the word out that you and everybody you know should go see it as soon as possible. It's definitely up there with Thoroughbreds as just pure outstanding stuff from this Spring, and much like Thoroughbreds I hope as many people see this movie as possible so it gets the attention it deserves.

The horror genre has been on a bit of an uphill curve recently, in 2016 we saw eight fun, unique horror movies, and 2017 nearly doubled that. It's a far cry from the typical diamond in the rough we get once a year, and although 2018 hasn't been as good, the upcoming release of films like Hereditary and The House that Jack Built set the stage for more greatness to come. And not only is A Quiet Place an outstanding horror movie, featuring some great direction and editing used to build suspense, but it's also a fantastic movie in general. It's a rare feat for a horror movie to accomplish being both scary and good, and while A Quiet Place isn't the scariest movie ever, it's a lot scarier than a lot of really good but not very scary horror movies like It Follows or Oculus. 

Dialogue is one of the strongest assets an actor has, the tone and range an actor speaks is probably the easiest way to convey on-screen emotion, so it's always interesting seeing deaf/mute characters or seeing stories where the cast has to convey emotions in any way except for tone of voice and dialogue. While only one of the characters in this movie is actually deaf, for a large portion of the movie none of them have any ability to speak or even make noise. It's all in the face, it's all in the body language; save for the two scenes in which characters actually talk to each other. There's also something to be said for this movie for casting an actual deaf actress to play the deaf kid, not only does this kid turn out a great performance but also kudos to this movie for going that extra mile for authenticity.

If there's any one aspect that's always a big topic for me, it's anything that involves editing and sound. I'm a sucker for good editing and good post-production technique, and especially anything that involves sound mixing. For a movie like this, one where sound is the key component of the story and the volume and range of certain noises is the gimmick of the movie, sound mixing is of the upmost importance. And let me tell you, as far as this category is concerned, this movie never misses a single beat. And every noise is at just the right range too, nothing that is meant to be background noise is too loud, so when something is meant to be a loud disrupting noise, you would know it. It's a little hard to describe, but trust me if you see the movie you'll know what I mean.

If there's another quality this movie has thats something I regularly bring up it's the rule of show don't tell. For those unaware of what that means, essentially "show don't tell" means that background information about the story is better conveyed by visual cues and vague hints sprinkled throughout than one character flatly explaining the backstory or some text at the beginning catching the audience up to speed. A great example in this movie is that none of the characters at any point in the movie ever specifically say that the monsters are attracted to noise. It's the little things like the way characters behave and respond to noise, or newspaper articles shown just for a couple of seconds, at no point in the story is there a scene where everything is explained all at once, but the information is given slowly throughout the movie. It's great to see this as it's just getting a little tiring going into just about every movie and having to read a wall of text explaining the events leading up to the movie, or having one smart/scientist character explain the story to the main character. This movie begins in media res and only ever gives you just enough information to enjoy the story as it is, it never feels incomplete or like it's overcompensating.

Rating
Right up there with Thoroughbreds, A Quiet Place is truly something remarkable. Great sound editing, great acting, spectacular writing, hey it does its job as a horror movie. It's great to see that this movie is getting the praise and commercial success it deserves. If you haven't already, go check out A Quiet Place. It's a near-perfect horror movie with some genuinely amazing filmmaking to back it up.