The budget for A Quiet Place was estimated around $17 million and brought in $50.2 million on opening weekend in the domestic box office.
Even though sign language is used extensively, the movie contains only 25 lines of voice dialogue.
The whole movie was shot in only thirty-six days.
Even though the movie has no connections to Paramount's Cloverfield, A Quiet Place was once considered to be helmed as part of the Cloverfield film franchise. However, the timing was off as Paramount was in the process of writing the script for 10 Cloverfield Lane. One idea was even proposed about both the Cloverfield series and A Quiet Place crossing over at one point. Ultimately, A Quiet Place became a stand alone film instead due to being "too different" for the Cloverfield series and director John Krasinski was relieved and grateful for Paramount to leave the film as is.
Review:
In a post-apocalyptic world, the Abbott family is forced to live in silence while hiding from alien monsters that hunt by sound.
A Quiet Place was a box-office smash hit in 2018 with reviews raving about the movie's unique way of using sign language to tell a story. Ever since then, horror movies like Bird Box and The Silence have tried to replicate A Quiet Place by subtracting one of the characters' main senses, whether it is sound or sight, in order to survive. Some were successful like Bird Box, but others not so much. To this day, A Quiet Place is still the top dog in its simple story-telling, great acting, and the uneasy dread from the movie being totally quiet. The monster designs, however, could have been better.
Starting with the pros, I love how the movie shows the events of the movie unravelling rather than tells. It shows how this family has to resort to an extreme life style of not having any noise just so the attention of the monsters. It shows stuff like the family having to follow a sand path from their home to town and back barefooted; or how the kids are playing Monopoly with game pieces made out of yarn; or the main character, Lee (played by John Krasinski), has been researching and studying these creatures for quite some time looking for a way to fight off the monsters with some sort of advantage. It doesn't take away from the story the movie is telling. It rather adds on to what the Abbott family has been going through.
I even love how the movie doesn't tell you what these monsters are from the characters, but gives the audience quick glimpses through newspaper clippings and magazine articles. It gives a sense that humanity has been driven on the verge of extinction at a huge disadvantage by how these creatures are highly resilient to any modern weapons.
Most of the acting in A Quiet Place is mostly through expressive body and sign language and it does a very well job showing how these characters are happy, sad, frustrated, scared, desperate, and horrified. The only times where there is any vocal dialogue are when Lee and his son, Marcus, are hanging out by a waterfall having father and son heart to heart talking about Regan and when Lee and Evelyn (Emily Blunt) are alone together in this sound-proof bunker/baby room. What really gets me are moments where parents sacrificing themselves to protect their kids and that short moment where Lee signs to his daughter, Regan, that he loved her really got me teary eyed. The rest of the family survives, but when following the relationship of Lee and his daughter being rocky up to that point made me care about the characters. It made me want to see the whole family survive and it gets really sad when not everyone in this family makes it by the end of the movie. I will say that seeing Emily Blunt with a shotgun did look a little goofy. It's not bad, but I had a chuckle when Emily Blunt tries to put on her serious face and her serious face looks like she is about to go full Rambo on the next wave of monsters after killing the one that was terrorizing the family.
As for the design of the monsters, it looks unique in a way that it almost resembles a bat, especially when parts of the monster's exoskeleton can open up to listen for any nearby prey forming an outline that looks like bat ears. In some ways, though, I think the design of the monster could have been better because it just screams Cloverfield. The limbs of the arms and legs contorting and being longer than its body just makes it look like the monster from Cloverfield. People have questioned if the monster was inspired by Cloverfield or if this movie is secretly a part of the Cloververse series. We know that this isn't the case, but the fact that it almost did become a Cloverfield movie might have had some impact on the design.
Final Thoughts:
While the design of the monster isn't the best looking, A Quiet Place is still a great horror movie to this day with the movie's simple story, great acting, and the use of silence to create this atmosphere of dread. If you are curious about A Quiet Place Part 2, but haven't seen the first movie yet I highly recommend giving the first movie a watch.
What are your thoughts on A Quiet Place? What did you like or didn't like about the movie? Will you be seeing the sequel? Leave a comment in the comments section of your thoughts on A Quiet Place? Make sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Minds, MeWe, and Gab to stay up to date for more news, reviews, and discussions.