My friends, it is that time of year once again… electricity price incre- I mean the Month of Spooks! For those ones who maybe be new, during the month of October, I will be dedicating the blog to the spookier side of entertainment. So yeah… let the spooky shit commence!
Ladies, gents, and non-binaries… “A Quiet Place”.
The world has gone to shit. Society has been broken down by monsters that will hunt and kill you if you make a noise. In the middle of this apocalypse is the Abbott family, just trying their best to stay completely silent in order to survive. I enjoyed the story here, because it’s very simple. It takes the one sentence premise of “Shut the fuck up or the blind monsters will nom on your bits” and works to create a suspenseful and and engaging survival thriller out of it. And while I do think it loses some of its intensity and creepiness towards the end, as it goes for a big-ish finale and showing off the monsters a bit much, I still think it mostly succeeds in otherwise creating tense scenarios that had me invested. I also think that the filmmakers were smart in making this movie a brisk 90 minutes, as it keeps it flowing along nicely and never letting any bit overstay its welcome. It’s a solid, if simple horror story.
The characters in this are… fine? There is an attempt to give them *some* depth, but it rarely strikes the gold they’d need in order to get me to say “Yeah, I care about all of these people”. I will say that the arc between the father and the daughter is the most interesting aspect, but I feel like they don’t do enough with it to call it a truly compelling character arc/dynamic. I like the idea with it, and there’s some interesting moments involving it, but it still feels VERY surface level. What I can say however is that the performances in this are great. John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, and Noah Jupe all deliver top tier work. Especially Simmonds, she’s the MVP here.
The score for the movie was composed by Marco Beltrami, who we talked about a fair bit earlier this year when we went through the “Scream” movies. Anyhow, Beltrami’s score in this movie is really good. His big, intense set piece tracks are really fun, playing around with brass, strings, and even some fun sound effects mixed in. And his quieter, more emotional tracks are really good too. Beltrami’s a composer I’ve liked for years, and this is another hit from him.
“A Quiet Place” was directed and co-written by John Krasinski, and I think he did a solid job here. He has a good way of using space to sell action and building the suspense around the situations. And holy hell, the cinematography by Charlotte Bruus Christensen is gorgeous, striking the perfect balance between general eye candy and solid visual storytelling. Christopher Tellefsen’s editing is also pretty solid. It’s just a generally well crafted movie.
This movie’s been quite well received. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 96% positive rating and a “Fresh” certification. On Metacritic it has a score of 82/100. And on imdb.com it has a score of 7.5/10.
While its characters are a bit underdeveloped, “A Quiet Place” is a tense and highly solidly well made horror movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. It has a good story, okay-ish characters, great performances, great music, and really good direction/cinematography. Time for my final score. *BOO!*. My final score for “A Quiet Place” is an 8.01/10. So while flawed, it’s worth buying.
My review of “A Quite Place” is now completed.
Ssshhhh, be quiet, or the monsters will find my dumb ramblings.
TheMarckoguy 
I actually saw this at the cinema in 2018, a rare trip out for me. Then I reviewed it on my blog.
As you can see, I really liked it!
Best wishes, Pete.