A Quiet Place: The Importance of Noise

 ‘A Quiet Place’ is a 2018 released thriller which was initially proposed as a ‘Cloverfield’ instalment. The film follows the lives of a family of five (then four (then five again)) surviving in the post apocalyptic earth of 2020. I’m this dystopian future, the land is overrun by flesh-eating creatures that hunt using only the sense of hearing. As these creatures rely purely on noise, the remaining human population live in silence to protect themselves from imminent death. The film keeps this theme consistent with the, of course, obvious fact that a massive amount of the plot is portrayed through silence but also through tedious and subtle ways to keep the viewers subconscious integrated in this idea. When the characters venture outside, they walk on specifically placed sand foot prints to keep the noise of walking suppressed.

Forgetting about the entire story and filmmaking process, if you were to strip this movie down to it’s bare minimum you wouldn’t see the skeleton of a story but rather the outline of an idea. This is something I admire a lot about this release and it’s not how well they told a story or even anything at all to do with what’s its about but rather the fact they gave themselves a very hard task to make an enjoyable film with such a difficult restraint. Films are visual story telling and this was taken to a whole new level. It’s the human senses refined to see exactly what we need to see and when we need to see it but instead of using audio to influence the story it becomes the guide, we follow the noise like the creatures the very theme revolves around. The viewer relies on sound in this film but is never provided it, but when we are it makes the largest impact I have ever experienced in a cinema. It is as though we crave the noise like an addict to an addiction.

I would highly recommend seeing ‘A Quiet Place’ but I think it’s important to keep the theme in mind when watching.