A Quiet Place
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A Quiet Place is a 2018 American horror film directed by John Krasinski, who also stars alongside Emily Blunt, his real-life spouse. The film is produced by Michael Bay's company, Platinum Dunes, which is also owned by Andrew Form and Bradley Fuller. The screenplay was written by Krasinski, Bryan Woods, and Scott Beck, based on a story by Woods and Beck. The plot follows a family who must live life in silence while hiding from creatures that hunt by sound.
Beck and Woods began working on the story in 2013, and Paramount Pictures bought their spec script in 2017. Krasinski then joined as director and wrote a new draft of the script. Principal photography took place later in the year in upstate New York.
A Quiet Place premiered at South by Southwest on March 9, 2018 and was released in the United States on April 6, 2018, by Paramount Pictures. It has grossed $80 million worldwide and received acclaim from critics, who called it a "smart, wickedly frightening good time".
Plot
In the year 2020, most of Earth's human population has been wiped out by a race of sightless, extra-terrestrial creatures with incredible hearing ability— Which they use to hunt their prey with pinpoint accuracy. The Abbott family—husband Lee (Krasinski), wife Evelyn (Blunt), deaf daughter Regan, sons Marcus and Beau—scavenge for supplies while remaining as silent as possible by walking barefoot, and communicating non-verbally through American Sign Language. Lee relieves Beau of a toy space shuttle, warning him that its noise could attract the creatures, and removes the batteries. However, Regan returns the toy to Beau who, unseen by the family, puts the batteries back inside of it. On their way home, Beau turns the toy on and attracts one of the creatures, resulting in his death.
A year later, the family are living on their farm, and Evelyn is in the final stages of pregnancy. Lee repairs Regan's implant, but the device fails to restore her hearing. Regan, still struggling with the guilt of her brother's death, becomes bitter and tells her father to stop trying to help her deafness. Later, Lee takes Marcus to a nearby river to teach him to fish despite Regan begging to go instead. Dejected, she goes off on her own to visit Beau's grave and stays there until nightfall. Lee explains to Marcus that they will always be safe from the creatures so long as sounds from the environment mask their own audible movements. On the way back, they come across an elderly man who stands over a woman - presumably his wife - who has been killed (most likely by the creatures). Lee signals to the man to control himself emotionally, but he is unable to and screams out in misery, attracting a creature which charges and kills him. Marcus, unsettled by the scene, is restrained by Lee, and they move on.
Meanwhile, Evelyn goes into labor earlier than expected. While making her way to the basement, she steps on a nail protruding from the stairs. In agony she accidentally drops a glass picture frame, alerting one of the nearby creatures. Evelyn warns Lee and Marcus of danger by flipping a switch that changes the house's lights from white to red. Evelyn struggles to remain silent during contractions. Arriving at the farm and seeing the lights, Lee instructs Marcus to create a diversion while Lee runs to find Evelyn. He finds her hiding in the bathroom with their newborn son and narrowly avoids another attack while carrying them to the soundproof basement he has constructed for the baby. Evelyn begs Lee to find the children in the cornfield and he obeys. After falling asleep, Evelyn wakes up to discover that the basement is flooded with water from a leaking pipe, and one of the creature is pursuing them.
Regan hurries back to the farm, having seen the diversionary fireworks Marcus had set off. She and Marcus take refuge atop a fallen grain silo, lighting a fire to alert their father to their whereabouts. The fire goes out and Regan refuses to wait for her father despite the urging of Marcus. A hatch door gives way and Marcus falls into the silo, sinking into the corn, nearly suffocating before Regan jumps in and saves him. They avoid further danger by clinging to the fallen silo door and survive a subsequent creature attack by hiding under it. Regan's repaired cochlear implant reacts to the proximity of the creature by emitting a piercingly loud high-frequency sound that drives the creature off. The children escape from the silo and reunite with Lee.
The creature returns and Lee attacks it with a pulaski while Marcus and Regan hide in a pickup truck. Lee is wounded and Marcus inadvertently shouts, attracting the creature to the truck. Lee signs to tell his children that he loves them before sacrificing himself in order to draw the creature away from the children. Regan and Marcus disengage the truck's brake and roll down a hill to escape and reunite with a grieving Evelyn and the baby back at the farmhouse.
Regan, not having been allowed in the basement previously, sees for the first time her father's notes on the creatures and his experimentation with several different implants, as well as radio equipment and security camera monitors. When the creature returns to invade the basement, Regan realizes the power of the boosted cochlear implant. She places it on a nearby microphone, magnifying the feedback to ward off the creature. Painfully disoriented, the creature exposes the flesh beneath its armored head, rendering itself vulnerable to a shotgun blast from Evelyn.
The security monitors show two other creatures approaching. With their newly acquired knowledge of the creatures' weakness, Evelyn and the children prepare to fight back.
