Review: In John Krasinski’s ‘A Quiet Place,’ Silence Means Survival

I was seriously underwhelmed. I had a hard time taking for granted that the monsters were here and we had absolutely no idea where they came from. We also had no idea if they were alive or robots. I had no idea how the dad's electronic gizmos functioned, since it seemed that they had no electricity. I also didn't know that the young actor was deaf. I couldn't understand why the parents chose to have another child. I mean, honestly, hadn't they hoarded condoms, at the very least? Or taken any from the grocery store? Why bring another child into a world of horror? Mainly I was bored by this slice-of-life, all-white world. I guess the monsters already devoured all the people of color?

I was so affected by this movie that, during a bathroom break at home, I caught myself creeping quietly up the stairs. Yes, there are a lot of plot holes, and questionable aspects to the movie - try not to look too deeply and just let yourself be carried along by the story, which is well told and acted. A taut post-apocalyptic thriller.

One of the most original and exciting movies I have ever seen in over 60 years of watching cinema. A superior thriler on par with the very best. DO NOT MISS THIS!!

Many over-analytical comments. Some people just don’t know how to let go and have fun. Let go and have fun. Top Critics score on Rotten Tomatoes: 100 percent. I agree. My only regret is I saw it at home on DVD and not in a theater, and consequently missed out on sharing the audience tension.

The Descent (2005) anyone? :)

I am an old woman. I have seen many films. This is the worst film I've ever seen in my life.

One of the most mindless movies I've ever seen. No plot or story line or back story. The only good thing one can say about this is that since people can't talk or the blind monsters will hear them, hunt them and eat them, there is no dumb dialog to accompany the silly action. The only thing this film does well is scare you with the same tired device over and over and over and over again. Mindless, mindless, plotless, nonsense.

I'm writing in case anyone is thinking of wasting their money on this movie. This was awful, on all levels: The world made no sense, the direction/camerawork was poor, the characters cardboard, the dialogue silly. It was also derivative (think of an entire movie of Jurassic Park in the kitchen). Basically the only positive thing about the film is its concept. SPOILERS The illogic is painful & lazy-- 1. if the aliens can hear a noise from what seems like a mile away, why can't they hear someone breathing from a foot away. Or sneezing. Or shuffling on sand. 2. How do the aliens run through woods & avoid trees? Sonar? If so, they would easily hear humans walking. Regular earth animals hear humans walking. 3. Behind this waterfall we can shout & scream! But let's live in a barn where we have to use sign language. 4. A baby makes noise. So let's have a baby & risk everyone's death including the baby's! Sounds like a good plan. 5. We can talk underground when a magical mattress is over us! Somehow that muffles the sound. But let's not live there. 6. We can live off of fresh food every night even though we live on a farm in what looks like New England. 7. Our corn field is magically harvested utterly silently, without machines. 8. We use electricity--lots. It is powered by magic. Also we use candles. 9. Louder noise magically obscures our noise. But let's not live behind loud noise. That would make too much sense. I could go on, but this movie was too silly for words.

The "Alien" updated and not any better. Sci-fi/action movies allow us to accept the implausible as plausible but not in this movie. Ex: Mother is walking up the stairs with two heavy bags and one gets caught on something. Rather than looking to see how to free it quietly she pulls and cracks something making a loud noise which of course lures the creature while also revealing a long nail on a step that obviously will cause even more trouble. Another example is the children in the grain silo. The grain was like quicksand forcing the kids to get themselves on top of a platform that appears to float on the sand. When the creature came down the silo they hid under the platform while the creature was on top of it yet somehow they were no longer subject to the quicksand affects of the grain. Many other problems covered by others. At best a two star out of five for me.

Why was I so enthralled by this movie? The nail. And having to keep quiet. I had a hard time not yelling at the audience.

It's a highly entertaining movie if you can get over all the plot holes and lack of logic. 1. Where do the creatures come from and how did they get here? If they are from another planet, how did they build and navigate an interstellar space ship without the ability to see? Also, they seem rather primitive -- not super-intelligent beings. The film intentionally leaves you wondering; as noted in the review, the screenwriters believe the creatures' origin is irrelevant to the action. 2. These creatures move at very high speeds, yet don't ever crash into anything. Perhaps they navigate via sonar? But when they get to a staircase, they creep up, grasping the handrail. 3. How is it that the farm has functioning electricity? There's no generator. There must be a power plant somewhere -- and power plants make noise. Yet everyone in the town is either dead or has fled. Does this family pay an electric bill somehow? 4. How does this family have a huge and healthy cornfield without the use of any kind of farm equipment? No tractor, no harvester, nothing that would make a sound. Are we to believe they can silently harvest several acres of corn? 5. Did anyone consider laying mines and then luring the creatures with a boombox? Or making their heads explode with some giant speakers and a Taylor Swift CD? 6. What happened to the U.S. military? Was it completely defeated, destroyed and eaten by the creatures?

"You may go in jaded, but you’ll leave elated or I’ll eat my words." A terribly written review of a terribly written movie. No wonder A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis passed on this one. I'll be glossing over Mr. Catsoulis's reviews from this point forward.

painful to watch in a movie theatre, as modern audiences are seemingly incapable of keeping quiet even in a movie about keeping quiet. sheer torture. good film though.

The trailer with the kid and the toy plane was the scariest part and seeing it beforehand was a mistake because the movie wasn’t that scary afterwards. The monsters were dumb, not scary and derivative. They’d have been scarier if they were more human like. The movie made me tense not scared. Finally, the nail idea was dumb. First of all, nails aren’t put in the middle of a step. Secondly, why? Seriously? A nail and puncture wound was necessary to further the story? In sum: Dumb. Not scary.

"Neither intellectually deep nor even logically sound (press any soft spot and the whole plot caves in)" -- I agree and I was not able to get past this. The soft spots in this move are akin to a horror movie where a given is that every character likes to wear squeaky shoes that make lots of noise when trying to hide. The solution is too obvious and too critical to ignore. But the acting in this was really great. I'll watch Emily Blunt stressed out in anything.

The Quiet Place is where they Tiptoe and Scavenge the Deserted farm Silent like a tiny oxygen mask on a new baby The Absence of sound and souls gone missing Fighting creatures, weapons gone rogue Creatures that throb with unspoken menace the relationship between silence and survival is mind-shredding The Palpable Plight of clattering appendages in an old-fashioned sense The creatures are blind, hungry and navigate by sound

Start eating words. "Meh" at best. We've now learned to note which critic makes the pick before rushing to see future NYT Critics' Picks.

Cannot give it more than 3/5 stars and that is generous. These Jurassic Park raptors have traveled through space but can't see, the family is seemingly the last alive on Earth but electricity is still available. They eat well though. They all have to risk going to town to pick up a bottle of pills. The newspaper clippings assert that neither bombs nor bullets work but the shotgun seems quite effective. Perhaps a gun with a silencer would have done even more good. The people know the creatures are very sensitive to sound but never tried the Mars Attacks! Slim Whitman record until the end of this movie? And sometimes it is about the nail !!!

Proving that the best tricks are the oldest, the nail causes more suspense than the creatures.

This is a movie that had it all...Unfortunately, the ending lacked cohesion which made it a C- rating at best. If a sequel is planned? It can be salvaged. Krasinski proves to be a great director with incredible attention to detail. I just think more thought SHOULD have been put into the sequence of events and the ending. I would wait for it to come on NETFLIX or ON DEMAND.

"The creatures are blind, hungry and navigate by sound...." Well, two out of three. On his whiteboard of notes Lee wrote "why don't they eat what they kill?"

If you're reading this, you're already overthinking it! So it qualifies as "middle brow" entertainment for certain folks--if you're looking for a good old fashioned night at the movies, just go see it!

If you want a film that defends traditional gender roles, this is the movie for you. Dad is the protector and Mom needs protection (as do the kids, but Dad is sometimes less attentive to that than he ought to be). Many of the scares depend on our belief that women are fragile/helpless/compromised/emotional and men are strong. The penultimate moment idealizes American masculinity and the ending falls flat because of that. There is simply no place for the filmmaker to go after Dad makes his choice. I didn't leave the theater elated or rapturous about the alleged "genius" of this movie. I left wondering why we're responding so powerfully to a film that reflects a 1950s version of marriage and family. Soundscape was great, however, and the reviewer has been rightly chastised in the comments for the worst kind of spoiler, right at the top of the review.

mr krasniki is wonderful as ever, alas, ms blunt is, as ever, vanilla and not worthy....interesting script. overall, enjoyable.

Well, it's already made a ton of money so we've got to start thinking about sequels. I'm guessing that in the next installment the creatures will be frightened of noise and will be hunting down their victims at libraries.

Such a good movie! Loved it!

We just saw this today. Loved it! No gore, no sex scene, not even the F word. I must have jumped 10 times. We fell in love with the family, all of them. Dont overthink the plot! If you want a break from miserable weather, and sit on the edge of your seat the entire time, go!

This is why, if I really want to see a movie, I don't read reviews (or killjoy comments with bonus spoilers) until I've done that. It's more fun to read reviews afterwards, anyway.

Am I the only one who wants this family to get eaten by the monsters? Why - because it's anti-urban, they're essentially a metaphor for upper middle class white suburbia's desire to be free of the constraints of an urban multi-cultural society and all the inherent complications of seeing other people as equal and worthy of participating in their world. In this fantasy the ideal is presented without shame, the white cold war nuclear suburban family, quirkily upgraded, but with their paranoia made rational because MONSTERS, read drugs, sex, gender, the poor, foreigners, socialists, all the things they are irrationally afraid of can be forgotten and their irrationality celebrated here in an entertainment product. I'm not asking all sci-fi dystopias to have more inclusive values among the survivalists, but it would be nice to think that simply keeping your family safe in free standing home on a two acre wooded lot in suburbia isn't the only option which will be left us when the real monsters get here.

My wife and I saw the movie and really liked it except for the ending that reminds me of the comment that today a problem with movies is that the directors don't know how to end a movie. This one is lives up to that comment.

Thought it was a well done suspenseful thriller with shades of Twilight Zone eeriness. It had me jump up a few times and then had me laughing at my own actions. Not to give anything away but think about how the Martians were done in from that crazy Nicholson movie last century. Hint: sound does travel.

This movie starts off with the quiet horror of a young child being snatched, builds momentum to an almost unbearable level, and then in its last third explodes into Munch's "The Scream". Not for the weak of heart. It, however, remains logical and coherent in plot and character throughout. By the end you deeply care for this family and the heart wrenching experiences they endure. But do all monstrous creatures today have to resemble "The Alien" and does the mother have to turn into Sigourney Weaver at the end.

I haven’t seen the movie, but wondering why a movie whose storyline employs silence as a main device would use music or sound effects to cue its audience. Does Krasinski not trust the audience?

Extremely disappointing. Yes, I'm in the minority, old enough to remember classic horror movies from the first Halloween to works of cinematic art, like The Exorcist. This movie is about nothing. No meaning, no subplot to carry a theme -- instead a series of events that ends with a nod to "mom power" a la Alien -- wherefrom this movie steals its monsters, too. It's very boring for its first half, relying on an occasional jump scare. Some are decent -- with monsters -- others silly, as when one family member bumps into another. Acting is very good, though the appeal of the kids may vary. SPOILER QUESTIONS FOLLOW: If bullets work against the monsters, why don't they use guns prior to the end? If mom and dad can talk freely when they're with the baby under a mattress in the basement, why don't they go down there earlier and talk as a family, instead of staying mum at every meal? Where does all that water come from when mom is flooded in the basement? From one washing machine? Why does that baby almost never cry? Why, in an attempt to quiet the baby, doesn't mom put it on her breast and start feeding it? Where does dad get all that stuff to build hearing aids, and all those monitors, and all those red lights if he's a farmer? If the timeframe of the movie is more than a year (confirmed by the day count) how do they plant and silently harvest all that corn? Proof again that wandering out to the theater for a "good" movie is a fraught exercise. Go Netflix/Amazon instead.

It seems that John Krasinski has create a movie not so much science fiction as allegory. In our contemporary world of internet trolls, online shamming and doxing, anything you say - or even imply - can be used against you, sometimes to lethal effect.

Quick question: Why would parents who live in a world where the slightest sound could be fatal choose to have a new baby? Just sayin'.

I would love to see this movie, but I would have to call John and Emma at 3:00 in the morning when I wake up screaming.

Having seen so much of the tripe that now passes for horror and science fiction, I wondered how could the movie be good when teenage or younger characters are so much a part of the action. Having seen it, I think Mr. Krasinski simply set a rule: no one does anything that does not make sense. One example: my first thought was what parent brings along a ten year old on a possibly dangerous trip. Leave them at home. He provided a reason built into the story and then later in the movie demonstrated why it worked. Same thing with Ms. Blunt’s health condition. First take was Huh? Then you realize this movie is about survival of Family in upper case, not hiding. This one won’t win any awards, but I look forward to his next film.

Good to know one of the three children doesn't survive the opening sequence. Now I neededn't invest any concern in either the child or his fate. Usually I don't care about "spoilers" in reviews (that sort of complaint is always a bit "fannish")--but, REALLY?

I saw this tonight and the production values elevated it beyond the typical “end of the world / monster” flick. Horror fans should like it - the creature effects are very good - and, if you’re looking for suspense - it’s unbearably tense. One thing I completly disagreed with? (If you read the review this was already mentioned so it’s not quite a spoiler - but if you did not, stop reading.) The pregnancy. I get that it could have been an accident but in an environment like that, one would think they would be very careful: babies cry a lot! Overall, a good, tight, short (!) movie.