A Quiet Place is a 2018 American post-apocalyptic horror film directed by John Krasinski. Made from a screenplay co-written by Krasinski, Scott Beck, and Bryan Woods based on a story Beck and Woods conceived, it tells the story of a mother (Emily Blunt) and father (Krasinski) who struggle to survive and raise their children (Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe) in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by blind extraterrestrial creatures with an acute sense of hearing.
Beck and Woods developed the concept for the story while in college and began writing the screenplay in January 2016. They told Platinum Dunes producers that they wanted Blunt for the role of the mother. In July 2016, Krasinski read their script for the role of the father. Krasinski was announced as director, co-writer, and co-star with Blunt in March 2017. Filming took place in upstate New York from May to November 2017.
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 grossed more than $340 million worldwide and received critical acclaim. A Quiet Place was chosen by the National Board of Review and American Film Institute as one of the top ten films of 2018.; The film received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing, and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay. Blunt won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role. It is the first film in the A Quiet Place universe. Its sequel, A Quiet Place Part II, was released in 2020.
Plot Sightless aliens with sharp hearing and impenetrable armored skin have taken over the planet and killed most of the human population. The Abbott family – father Lee, mother Evelyn, deaf daughter Regan, and sons Marcus and Beau – live on their isolated farm in the middle of a forest in Millbrook, New York, and have survived by taking precautions such as laying sand paths to avoid stepping on crunching leaves and using American Sign Language when communicating.
When the family goes into the nearby town for supplies, Beau finds a toy Space Shuttle, but Lee takes out the batteries and makes Beau leave it behind due to the noise it would make if powered on. As they are getting ready to leave, Regan returns the toy to Beau without its batteries, but Beau takes the batteries without anyone noticing. While walking back home, Beau activates the toy, which starts making noise. Almost immediately, Beau is killed by a nearby alien before Lee can reach him. Regan suffers terrible guilt after Beau's death. She hides her feelings of guilt from her parents, although Marcus is aware of them.
Over a year after Beau's death, Evelyn is pregnant with a fourth child. Lee is trying to build a working hearing aid for Regan, but can't master the electronics; the attempt causes a high-pitched noise, but does not improve hearing. Marcus reluctantly goes fishing with Lee while Regan, upset that she cannot go, visits Beau's grave. While the rest of the family is away, Evelyn goes into labor. While heading to the basement, she accidentally steps on an upright nail and drops a photo frame, alerting a nearby alien which enters the house. Struggling to stay silent amidst the pain, Evelyn flips a switch in the basement, turning the surrounding lights around the house red. The alien enters the basement soon after, but Evelyn distracts it by setting off an egg timer and escapes upstairs. Upon returning to the farm and seeing the red lights, Lee instructs Marcus to lure the alien out of the house by lighting off fireworks, allowing Evelyn to safely give birth to her baby.
Regan, seeing the fireworks, runs back to the house. Lee enters the house armed with a shotgun and finds the baby and Evelyn, then brings them into a hiding spot under the floor in the barn outside. The baby cries, and a creature enters the barn. The alien fails to find the source of the noise, but breaks some water pipes. Evelyn wakes up in the flooded hideout with the alien still inside and hides behind the falling water to mask her and the baby's sound.
Marcus and Regan climb to the top of a corn silo and light a signal fire to alert their father, but after the fire dies, Regan wants to leave. In trying to stop her, Marcus falls into the silo, and a segment of the roof that he fell through falls in after him. Regan jumps in after him and guides him on to the fallen roof segment, but then gets sucked into the corn, disappearing from sight. Marcus reaches in and, feeling Regan's hand, is able to pull her out. However, hearing the commotion, the alien, which is hunting for Evelyn, runs towards the silo and attacks Regan and Marcus. Unbeknownst to Regan, as she attempts to use the hearing aid her father was building, she fails to see the alien behind her and the faulty disruptive effect of the hearing aid emitting a high pitched whine, which causes the creature to reel in pain and retreat, breaking a hole in the silo which frees the children. Lee finds Regan and Marcus and directs them to his truck when he sees an alien nearby. When the alien attacks him, he is wounded, and Marcus cannot stifle a scream. The alien then attacks the truck, and Lee prepares to distract the alien to save his children. Lee signs to Regan that he has always loved her and proceeds to yell to draw the alien's attention. Marcus and Regan safely coast the truck back to the house.
Reuniting with a grieving Evelyn, they make their way back into the house, followed by an alien. Regan's hearing aid again misfires, causing the alien to react and Regan, now realizing its reaction to the high-pitched noise from her implant, places it on a microphone which amplifies the noise. The alien screeches in pain and involuntarily exposes the vulnerable tissue beneath the armor plating on its head, allowing Evelyn to kill it with Lee's pump shotgun. Armed with high-pitched sound as new weapon, the family prepares to defend themselves from the approaching pack of aliens who heard the shot; in the final scene, Evelyn is seen defiantly racking the shotgun, putting a live shell in the chamber.
Cast
Emily Blunt as Evelyn Abbott, wife of Lee, and the mother to their four children, Regan, Marcus, Beau, and baby Abbott. Krasinski said her character wanted to ensure that their children "be fully-formed, fully-thinking people." John Krasinski as Lee Abbott, an engineer who is Evelyn's husband and the father of Regan, Marcus, Beau, and newborn baby Abbott. Krasinski described his character as a survivalist focused on getting his family through each day. Krasinski also provided the motion-capture for the extraterrestrial creatures. Millicent Simmonds as Regan Abbott, Lee and Evelyn's 15-year-old deaf daughter, and Marcus' and Beau's older sister. Krasinski said he sought a deaf actress "...for many reasons; I didn't want a non-deaf actress pretending to be deaf ... 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." Noah Jupe as Marcus Abbott, Lee and Evelyn's 12-year-old middle child and Regan's and Beau's brother. Krasinski noticed Jupe in the 2016 miniseries The Night Manager and watched an early screening of the 2017 film Suburbicon to evaluate Jupe's performance. Cade Woodward as Beau Abbott, Lee and Evelyn's four-year-old son. Leon Russom as a man in the woods.
Production Development and writing
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods began writing A Quiet Place in January 2016 based on a concept they conceived in college. When they first spoke with Platinum Dunes about the project, the two said they wanted Emily Blunt for the role of the mother. Platinum Dunes' Michael Bay had a first-look deal with Paramount Pictures and showed their script to the studio. During the writing stage, Beck and Woods spoke to a Paramount executive, who suggested that the film could be a crossover with the Cloverfield franchise. When they took their final script to Paramount, the studio embraced it as a distinct, stand-alone story. Paramount bought the script from the duo. Platinum Dunes producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller sent the script to John Krasinski to play the role of the father, which he read in July. The concept of parents protecting their children appealed to him, especially as his second child with Blunt had recently been born. Beck and Woods also cited Bong Joon-ho's The Host (2006) as a significant influence on their screenplay for the film.
After reading Beck and Wood's script, Krasinski pitched his vision of the story to Blunt, who suggested he direct the film. In a meeting with the producers, Krasinski expressed his desire to co-write and direct it and pitched them his vision. When he co-wrote the script, he had Blunt in mind for the role; however, he did not ask her to do it as she had just had a child, was working on another film, and he was concerned that if he asked she would either decline it or accept it to support him. "I just thought if she does this, she has to come to it on her own." Blunt initially did not want to be cast, but after reading Krasinski's script on a flight she felt she needed to do it as the story "represented some of my deepest fears—of not being able to protect my children."
Beck and Woods said that Krasinski taking over the film as director "wasn't about reshaping it in any massive way" and that he "really protected our vision of the script". Krasinski said that their script differed from his "in a bunch of little ways, but the heart was all theirs. They really had this thing that I wanted to be a part of." He focused on the idea of family being the core of the story, "so every scare has to be because you love this family, every detail has to become a detail that says something about this family not just to be cool, not just to be scary." His contributions to the screenplay included the use of sign language, sand paths, the lights, and the walk to the forest and the pharmacy. Krasinski was initially anxious about having very little dialogue to work with, as he was concerned with how to "keep people interested". He then realized that minimal dialogue became the film's "superpower". The use of sign language came about when, prior to filming, Simmonds showed Krasinski the American Sign Language translation for a scene's dialogue, and he found her gestures to be "so much more cinematic than saying the words would've been". Blunt contributed to the pre-production stage of the film. Most of the directing Krasinski did with her role was off-screen from the moment she accepted the project. The two worked through the script and discussed the shots for the film before it went into production, and by the time they got on set they had "done all the collaborating ... all the hard work." Blunt "offered up the greatest ideas" for the film, he stated, crediting her for "raising the game" for him as a filmmaker.
In March 2017, Krasinski was announced as director and co-writer of the film, co-starring with Blunt. The film is his third directorial credit and his first for a major studio. The film was produced on a budget of $17 million.
Filming
The film was shot in 36 days. 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 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. Filming also took place on the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail in New Paltz of Ulster County, using the Springtown Truss Bridge. Outside Dutchess and Ulster counties, filming took place on Main Street in Little Falls in Herkimer County, New York.
Sound and music