A Quiet Place is a 2018 American horror film directed by John Krasinski, who stars alongside his real-life spouse Emily Blunt. The film is produced by Michael Bay's company, Platinum Dunes, which is also run 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. Beck and Woods began working on the story in 2014, and Paramount Pictures bought their spec script in 2017. Krasinski then joined as a director and wrote a new draft of the script. Principal photography took place later in the year in upstate New York. In A Quiet Place, a family must live life in silence while hiding from creatures which hunt exclusively by sound.

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 become a major box office hit, grossing $270 million worldwide and received acclaim from critics, who called it a "smart, wickedly frightening good time."[5] A sequel is currently in development.

Contents 
1    Plot
2    Cast
3    Production
3.1    Development and writing
3.2    Filming
3.3    Sound and music
3.4    Use of sign language
3.5    Creature design
4    Marketing
5    Release
5.1    Box office forecast
5.2    Theatrical run
6    Reception
6.1    Critical response
7    Social commentary
8    Sequel
9    See also
10    References
11    External links
Plot
Over three months in 2020, most of Earth's human population has been wiped out by sightless creatures with hypersensitive hearing and a seemingly impenetrable armored shell that attack anything that makes noise. The Abbott family — husband Lee, wife Evelyn, congenitally deaf daughter Regan, and sons Marcus and Beau — silently scavenge for supplies in a deserted town. Though skilled in American Sign Language, the family must nonetheless be vigilant lest they make accidental noise. Four-year-old Beau is drawn to a battery-operated space shuttle toy, but his father takes it away. Regan returns the toy to Beau, who unbeknownst to her has also taken the batteries his father removed. Beau activates the shuttle when the family is walking home through the woods, near a bridge. Its noise makes him an instant target for a nearby creature, and he is swiftly killed.

A year later, Regan still struggles with guilt over her brother's death, Evelyn is in the final stages of pregnancy, and Lee is fruitlessly trying to make radio contact with the outside world. Lee attempts to upgrade Regan's cochlear implant but the device fails to restore her hearing. Later, Lee takes Marcus to a nearby river to teach him to fish while Regan visits Beau's grave. Lee explains to Marcus that they will always be safe from the creatures so long as louder sounds mask their audible movements. Alone at the house, Evelyn goes into labor. While making her way to their specially modified soundproof basement, she steps on a large nail. In pain, she accidentally drops a glass picture frame and alerts a nearby creature. Evelyn flips a switch that changes the exterior house lights to red as a danger signal to the others, and struggles to remain silent during her contractions.

Arriving at the farm and seeing the lights, Lee instructs Marcus to set off fireworks as a diversion. He finds Evelyn hiding in the bathroom with their newborn son. The baby starts crying, attracting a creature, and they narrowly avoid another attack on the way to the basement. Lee leaves to find the other children, after promising Evelyn he will protect them. Evelyn falls asleep but wakes to discover that the basement is flooded with water from a broken pipe and that a creature is stalking her.

Regan hurries back to the farm. She and Marcus take refuge atop a grain silo, lighting a fire to alert their father to their whereabouts. A hatch door gives way and Marcus falls into the silo. He sinks into the corn and nearly suffocates, but 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 away. The children escape from the silo and reunite with Lee.

The creature returns and Lee attacks it with a ranger's axe called a Pulaski, while Marcus and Regan hide in a pickup truck. Lee is wounded and Marcus shouts, attracting the creature to the truck. Lee uses sign language to tell Regan and Marcus that he loves them before sacrificing himself by yelling to draw the creature away from his children. Regan and Marcus roll the truck down a hill to escape and reunite with Evelyn and the baby at the farmhouse.

Regan, who was not allowed in the basement previously, sees her father's notes on the creatures and on his experimentation with several different implants. When the creature returns to invade the basement, Regan places the boosted implant 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. Security monitors show two other creatures approaching. With their newly acquired knowledge of the creatures' weakness, the family prepares to fight back.

Cast
Emily Blunt as Evelyn Abbott, wife of Lee, and the mother to their three children, Regan, Marcus, and Beau. She is a doctor and is pregnant with their fourth child at the start of the film. Krasinski describes her character as wanting to ensure that their children "be fully-formed, fully-thinking people."[6]
John Krasinski, as Lee Abbott, an engineer, is married to Evelyn, and the father of Regan, Marcus, and Beau. Krasinski described his character as a survivalist who focuses on getting his family through each day.[6]
Millicent Simmonds as Regan Abbott, Lee and Evelyn's deaf daughter, and Marcus and Beau's sister. Krasinski said he sought a deaf actress, "... for many reasons, I didn't want a non-deaf actress pretending to be deaf. Most importantly though, because a deaf actress would help my knowledge and my understanding of the situations tenfold. I wanted someone who lives it and who could teach me about it on set."[6]
Noah Jupe as Marcus Abbott, the oldest son of Lee and Evelyn, and Regan and Beau’s brother. Krasinski noticed Jupe in the 2016 miniseries The Night Manager and later saw an early screening of the 2017 film Suburbicon to evaluate Jupe's performance.[6]
Cade Woodward as Beau Abbott, the younger son of Lee and Evelyn.
Evangelina and Ezekiel Cavoli as newborn baby Abbott to Lee & Evelyn.
Production
Development and writing
A Quiet Place is a production of Sunday Night and Platinum Dunes;[7] it was produced on a budget of $17 million.[8] Krasinski wrote the screenplay with story co-writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Beck and Woods grew up together in the US state of Iowa, and had watched numerous silent films in college. By 2013, they began working on the story that would lead to the film. They used their experience growing up close to farmland as the basis, including a grain silo setting as a place considered dangerous in their upbringing. They initiated their approach with a 15-page proof of concept.[9] Initially, the writers had considered developing the film into a Cloverfield installment, but after pitching their ideas to the studio collectively, all of those involved decided to keep the film its own entity.[10]

In January 2016, Beck and Woods began writing A Quiet Place in earnest.[11] Krasinski read their spec script the following July.[12] The concept of parents protecting their children appealed to him, especially as his second child with actress Emily Blunt had just been born.[6] Blunt encouraged him to direct the film.[12] By March 2017, Paramount had bought Beck and Woods's spec script. The studio hired Krasinski to rewrite the script and direct the film, which was his third directorial credit and his first for a major studio.[13] Krasinski cited cinematic influences including Alien (1979), No Country for Old Men (2007), and In the Bedroom (2001) when writing a new draft.[14] Initially, Blunt didn’t want to be cast in the film but after reading it on the plane, she immediately told her husband “I need to do it,”. [12] He agreed, and they were both cast in the starring roles of the film.[13]

Filming

The Springtown Truss Bridge on the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail, used as a location in the film
Production took place from May to November 2017 in Dutchess and Ulster counties in upstate New York. Filmmakers spent their budget locally, including a purchase of 20 tons of corn, which they hired local farmers to grow. Some filming took place on a soundstage in the town of Pawling in Dutchess County, as well as on-location in the county's city of Beacon.[15] Filming also took place on the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail in New Paltz of Ulster County, using the Springtown Truss Bridge.[16] Outside Dutchess and Ulster counties, filming took place on Main Street in Little Falls in Herkimer County, New York.[17]

Sound and music
During filming, the crew avoided making noise so diegetic synchronized sounds (e.g., the sound of rolling dice on a game board) could be recorded; the sounds were amplified in post-production. A traditional musical score was also added, which Krasinski justified in wanting audiences to remain familiar with watching a mainstream film, and not feel like part of a "silence experiment."[18]

Supervising sound editors Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn worked on A Quiet Place. For scenes from the perspective of the deaf daughter, sound was removed to put greater focus on the visual. They also advised on organizing shots to reflect the creatures' perspective, like showing them notice a sound, then showing what was causing the sound. Composer Marco Beltrami provided the sound editors music to work with in a way that would not interfere with the sound design throughout the film.[19]

In the film, creatures are blind and communicate through clicking sounds. Aadahl and Van der Ryn said they were inspired by animal echolocation, such as that employed by bats. The sound of feedback, normally avoided by sound editors, was woven into the story at a loudness level that would not bother audiences too much.[20]

Use of sign language
Since the characters communicate in American Sign Language to avoid making sound, filmmakers hired deaf mentor Douglas Ridloff to teach ASL to the actors and to be available to make corrections. The filmmakers also hired an ASL interpreter for deaf actress Simmonds, so that spoken and signed language could be interpreted back and forth on set.[21] Simmonds, who grew up with ASL, helped teach her fellow actors to sign.[22] She said of the need to practice ASL, "In the movie, we've been signing together for years and years. So it should look fluent."[23] She observed that the way the others used their sign language reflected their characters' motivations; the father had short and brief signs that showed his survival mentality, while the mother had more expressive signs as part of her wanting her children to experience more than survival.[24] Krasinski said Simmonds's character was "a little bit of the warrior princess, the black sheep in the family," and that she used "signing that's very defiant, it's very teenage defiant."[25]

Simmonds said that for a scene in which her character fights with her father in sign language, she suggested for the daughter to rebel rather than cower as in the script. She also said that at the end of the film, the script originally had the father sign to his daughter "I love you," but she suggested for him to follow with "I've always loved you" to make up for their arguing earlier in the film.[26]

The producers Andrew Form and Bradley Fuller said they initially planned not to provide on-screen subtitles for sign-language dialogue with "context clues," but realized that for the scene in which the deaf daughter and her hearing father argue about the modified hearing aid, subtitles were necessary. The producers subsequently added subtitles for all sign-language dialogue in the film. Producer Brad Fuller said, "And I think once you put one subtitle in, you subtitle the whole movie. You don't take liberties like, 'Oh they probably know what I love you is, but we don't subtitle it.' It's just gonna live everywhere and that's the world we live by."[27]

Creature design
Production designer Jeffrey Beecroft headed the creature design, and special effects supervisor Scott Farrar created the creatures. The director wanted the creatures to look like they had evolved to no longer need eyes, and to be "somewhat humanoid" in nature. Farrar said the initial creature design showed them with rhinoceros-like horns out of their faces, later redesigned. Vanity Fair reported, "The team immediately set about pulling references; prehistoric fish, black snakes, and bats, particularly their movement patterns. Inspiration was also drawn from bog people: cadavers that have been mummified in peat, turning the skin black and giving it a sagging, leathery look."[28]

Marketing
Paramount Pictures released the first trailer for A Quiet Place in November 2017.[29] It aired a 30-second commercial for the film during the US football playoff Super Bowl LII on February 4, 2018.[30] Of the seven trailers that aired during the playoff, A Quiet Place and Red Sparrow were shown during the pregame and had the lowest views and social conversations. A Quiet Place had 149,000 views on YouTube, 275,000 videos on Facebook, and 2,900 social conversations.[31][32] On February 12, 2018, Krasinski appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to present the full trailer for A Quiet Place.[33]

Release
A Quiet Place premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival as the opening-night film on March 9, 2018.[34] It was selected from 2,458 submissions,[35] and earned "raves" from critics, according to IndieWire.[36] Following its premiere, the film experienced social media growth to under 52 million views across multiple platforms, outpacing Get Out (2017), which had 46.9 million views.[8]

Box office forecast
The Tracking Board reported on March 14, "The stellar reviews out of SXSW, coupled with the fact that there isn't anything like it in the marketplace, should help it stand out among its bigger-budget competition."[37] Deadline Hollywood said on March 15 that the film was projected to gross around $20 million in its opening weekend.[8] Variety reported on March 27 that the film "is tracking to open between" $16 million and $30 million,[38] which reached a basement of low-$20 million by the week of its release.[39]

BoxOffice initially estimated on February 9, 2018 that A Quiet Place would gross $17 million in its opening weekend, and that it would gross a total of $60 million in the United States.[40] By March 30, it increased its estimate to an opening weekend gross of $27.5 million and a US total gross of $85 million.[41] The magazine said the film's trailer was well-received online and that it appeared frequently in previews for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. BoxOffice wrote, "The horror genre has also shown a knack for over-performing against expectations at the box office in recent years, setting this release up for potential success." It added that A Quiet Place would have to compete against another horror film, Truth or Dare, which would be released the following weekend.[40] The magazine's staff drew "very favorable" comparisons between A Quiet Place and the 2016 films 10 Cloverfield Lane and Don't Breathe.[42]

Theatrical run
A Quiet Place was first commercially released in theaters in the first week of April 2018 in multiple territories, including North America.[43] As of May 14, 2018, A Quiet Place has grossed $170.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $100.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $270 million.[3]

Paramount Pictures released the film in 3,508 theaters in the United States and Canada on April 6, 2018, alongside Blockers, Chappaquiddick, and The Miracle Season.[44] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an 81% overall positive score and a 63% "definite recommend."[45] The film made $19 million on its first day (including $4.3 million from Thursday night previews at 2,750 theaters), increasing weekend projections to $47 million. Unlike most horror films, which are front-loaded on Friday and suffer drops the rest of the weekend, A Quiet Place made $19.1 million on Saturday. It went on to debut to $50.2 million, topping the box office and marking the biggest opening for a Paramount film since Star Trek Beyond in July 2016.[45] To that point, it was second biggest domestic debut of 2018, behind Black Panther.[46]

The film made $32.9 million in its second weekend, dropping 34% (better than the 50+% that horror films normally see) and finishing second at the box office, behind newcomer Rampage ($35.7 million).[47] The hold represented the second-best-ever second weekend for a scary movie behind It.[48] The film regained the top spot the following week, grossing $20.9 million (a 36% drop),[49] but dropped back down to second place the following weekend behind newcomer Avengers: Infinity War with $10.7 million.[50]

Through its first two weeks of international release, the film had made $51.7 million, with its top markets being the United Kingdom ($9.2 million), Mexico ($5.1 million), Australia ($4.6 million), Brazil ($3.9 million), Indonesia ($3.4 million) and Taiwan ($1.9 million). It also debuted to $2.2 million in Russia, the biggest-ever opening for a Paramount horror film in the country.[51] In its third weekend overseas, it dip only 37% for a $15 million from 57 markets.[52] In its fourth weekend in international markets, it grossed $6.6 million.[53] As of May 13, the films largest markets are United kingdom ($16 million), Australia ($9.1 million), Mexico ($7.5 million) and Brazil ($6.9 million).[54][55] China, France and Japan are still to come as its major markets.[56]

Reception
Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 95%, based on 261 reviews, and an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A Quiet Place artfully plays on elemental fears with a ruthlessly intelligent creature feature that's as original as it is scary—and establishes director John Krasinski as a rising talent."[57] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 82 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "universal acclaim."[58]

Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, saying, "The question Krasinski tackles is what defines a family and what's needed to preserve it? 'Who are we,' asks Mom, 'if we can't protect our children?' The answers are worked out with satisfying complexity and genuine feeling, proving indeed that home is where family is. This new horror classic will fry your nerves to a frazzle."[59] The Hollywood Reporter's John DeFore described the film as "a terrifying thriller with a surprisingly warm heart" and said, "You might have to go back to Jeff Nichols' 2011 Take Shelter to find a film that has used the fantastic this well to convey the combination of fear and responsibility a good parent feels."[60]

Variety's Owen Gleiberman said, "A Quiet Place is a tautly original genre-bending exercise, technically sleek and accomplished, with some vivid, scary moments, though it's a little too in love with the stoned logic of its own premise."[7] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars and said, "My favorite moment, an encounter between Regan and one of the monsters in a cornfield, plays with sound and image and tension, creatively. Other bits are more shameless...I don’t know if I’d call A Quiet Place enjoyable; it’s more grueling than cathartic."[61]

Horror author Stephen King praised the film in a post on Twitter, "A QUIET PLACE is an extraordinary piece of work. Terrific acting, but the main thing is the SILENCE, and how it makes the camera's eye open wide in a way few movies manage."[62]

Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com said that A Quiet Place is "Krasinski's breakthrough as a triple-threat entertainer, but it's been a long time coming ... By no accident, he’s tackled the horror genre while relying on the unique strength that can be seen throughout his acting work, and one that has made him relatable as an everyman across TV and film—expressive silence."[63]

Social commentary
Speaking of the political and social commentary the film encouraged, Krasinski said, "The best compliment you can get on any movie is that it starts a conversation. The fact that people are leaving and talking about anything is really fun—but certainly about deep stuff like that, is awesome."[64] Krasinski, who did not grow up with horror films, said that prior films of the genre such as Don't Breathe (2016) and Get Out (2017) that had societal commentary were part of his research. In addition to considering his film a metaphor for parenthood, he compared the premise to US politics in 2018, "I think in our political situation, that's what's going on now: You can close your eyes and stick your head in the sand, or you can try to participate in whatever's going on." He cited Jaws (1975) as an influence, with how the protagonist police officer moved from New York to an island to avoid frightening situations, and was forced to encounter one in his new location with shark attacks.[65]

Matthew Monagle of Film School Rejects said A Quiet Place seemed to be "the early frontrunner for the sparsely intellectual horror movie of the year," like previous films The Babadook (2014) and The Witch (2015). Monagle said Krasinski, who had directed two previous films, was "making an unusual pivot into a genre typically reserved for newcomers," and considered it to be part of a movement toward horror films layered "in storytelling, [with] character beats not typically found in a horror movie."[66] Tatiana Tenreyro, writing for Bustle, said while A Quiet Place was not a silent film, "It is the first of its kind within the modern horror genre for how little spoken dialogue it actually has." She said the rare moments of spoken dialogue "give depth to this horror movie, showing how the narrative defies the genre’s traditional films even further."[67]

Bishop Robert Barron was surprised by strikingly religious themes in the film. He likened the family's primitive, agrarian life of silence to monasticism, and commends their self-giving love. Barron noted the pervasive pro-life themes, especially in the choices of the parents, as Mrs. Abbott risks everything to give birth to a child, and her husband lays down his own life so that the children can live: what Barron sees as the ultimate expression of parental love.[68] Sonny Bunch of the Washington Post also commented and expanded on a pro-life message.[69]

Krasinski, who had recently become a new father, said in a conference interview "I was already in a state of terror about whether or not I was a good enough father," and added that the meaning of parenthood had been elevated for him by imagining being a father in a nightmare world, struggling to simply keep his children alive.[70] Jonathan Hetterly, writing in Shrinktank, see the film's whole premise as a commentary on modern American paranoid parenting,[71] saying that Krasinski "viewed the premise as a metaphor for a parent’s worst fears."

Krasinski himself has told CBS News “The scares were secondary to how powerful this could be as an allegory or metaphor for parenthood. For me, this is all about parenthood.”