🎬🎥 A QUIET PLACE: the most intelligent scary movie since The Blair With Project.

I went to the cinema yesterday to see A QUIET PLACE by John Krasinski and it was just as good as everyone was saying, so I really recommend anyone here to go see it as soon as possible - even if you don't particularly like horror movies. Because in my mind it is not so much a horror movie, and rather a suspense movie. True, the alien adversaries of our protagonists are truly horrific but the real enemy in that clever movie is nothing else than... SOUND!

At 95 minutes, A Quiet Place is a perfect piece of entertainment. We start 472 days after the United States (and by extension the world) has been attacked (and defeated) by a terrifying race of aliens/monsters/beasts which is way too vicious and powerful to be repulsed by conventional weapons. The survivors scrap by what they can from abandoned towns and huddle in their soundproof houses because... the enemy is blind and uses an ultra-developed sense of earring to locate, attack and kills humans and animals - something which is made clear in the masterful first ten minutes.

^{Silent running!}

As it is often the case in such movies, the story focuses on one family: the mother, the father, one boy and one girl. It's been 472 days since the start of the invasion and they have had time enough to adapt, improvise and survive, by remaining as silent as possible in their farm and by banning anything which could cause the beasts to find and devour them. The plates and the cooking instruments are banned, noisy toys are prohibited, shoes are way too noisy, and eventually... even the words are used as sparsely as possible, replaced by nods, frowns, grins and the good old fashioned sign language. However, even without words, the communication can remain difficult and the misunderstanding... fatal. In spite of the danger, the unity of the family is far from certain.

^{In the woods, no one must hear you cry!}

Once all these details are in place, the movie suddenly accelerates and all the carefully laid threads of the story are resolved in a relentless last act which covers something like 12 hours. The fact that any noise or sound could attract the monsters and cause the death of the whole family is perfectly exploited and will leave you breathless and gaping for air.

^{It's (blood)bath time!}

I find it really interesting that Paramount has invested so much money and marketing on a script which would, last decade, have been made for less than a million dollars by some clever genius like the ones who did "The Blair Witch Project". It shows that some big studios have learned their lesson and are willing to invest in the most interesting scripts rather than churn remake after remake.