A Quiet Place (2018)

A Quiet Place (2018) directed by John Krasinski, is a deeply terrifying horror movie. The film follows a family in a post-apocalyptic world filled with vicious creatures that hunt their prey based on sound. The family has learned to remain absolutely silent while going about daily life and uses American Sign Language to communicate.

Don't Breathe (2016) directed by Fede Álvarez, also follows a group of people being hunted by the sounds they make, but A Quiet Place is significantly more successful in their use of this concept. The family in A Quiet Place has learned to adapt and survive in this ruthless world, whereas the group of teens in Don't Breathe merely react to being thrown into a high-risk situation. Millicent Simmonds plays a teenage girl who feels responsible for her brother's death, and is deaf in real life. This allows her performance to feel much more real and brings out the intensity and emotion of the film even more than a non-disabled actor could.

The film's use of silence magnifies the noises that the characters do make, creating a psychological thrill on levels that only a select few movies are able to reach. The story is strengthened further by the relatively small amount of time the monsters are actually on screen. The threat that the creatures pose is established early in the film, through the death of the family's youngest member. However, the vast majority of the film focuses on the family's struggles to remain silent, and their desperate attempts to fix any mistakes they make before they are hunted down.  While the threat of the monsters is always present, the monsters themselves are usually not. This adds an interesting dynamic to the film, allowing the audience to deeply connect with the characters by placing the focus on them as individuals and their different experiences in the same world. The audience gains insight into the internal conflicts each family member has, in addition to the external conflict in the world. Simmonds' character struggles more with the guilt of her brother's death than the monsters themselves, and longs for her father's love.

 It is not until the father's gruesome end, and the end of the film, that Simmonds' character realizes she has had his love all along, and he does not blame her for her mistakes. This conflict is much larger than the threat of death, and is a common feeling that children have, especially in their teenage years. A Quiet Place has a very well developed storyline that has many distinct layers.