Welcome, dear readers, to Substream’s 31 Days of Halloween. While every holiday captures the hearts and minds of the Substream staff, Halloween holds an especially important place in our hearts. Now that we’ve entered the month of October, it’s time for us to share our love for this holiday with you.
Every single day in October, our collection of spooky staff writers and ghoulish guest contributors will walk you through a horror or Halloween-themed movie they adore. The goal is to both celebrate the titans and icons of the season while also introducing you to new films and scares to fill your autumn nights. Lock your doors, check under your bed, and settle in as you join Substream for our 31 Days of Halloween.
Day 12: A Quiet Place (2018)
When you head into a movie theater, more often than not you’re expecting the sound to be loud in order to drown out people slurping on their drinks or eating popcorn and other various snacks throughout the run time. With A Quiet Place, you instead get so much silence that it feels like everyone tenses up in the movie theater.
I’ll admit, I was a little annoyed when I sat down and had a couple with a kid sitting right next to me in a near-empty theater. I took a look around and also saw a dog and another child in the theater. It wasn’t the ideal viewing experience, but I still had that tense feeling the entire time. This is one of those movies that, for me, might be better experienced at home just so I can better control the viewing experience all around.
That said, John Krasinski created a movie that was different from many of the horror movies I had previously seen. Even as I dive into the horror genre more and more, I’ve yet to come across something similar to it (maybe it’s out there and I just haven’t found it, though). The score was much more subtle than the screeching that you get in a movie like Carrie when something bad is about to happen. Instead, A Quiet Place relishes in the silence so that you have no idea when something bad is truly coming.
Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, and Noah Jupe round out the main cast with Krasinski and they all put on fantastic performances. With Simmonds not only playing a deaf character but actually being deaf herself, it increases the impact of her performance. She taught the other actors some sign language along the way and the off-screen interactions made them feel like a truly bonded family on screen.
There are so many things surrounding this movie that make it an impressive feat. I thought with a movie mostly being silent, I’d get bored along the way, but it was quite the opposite. Now I won’t say the story was perfect, but it was effective. It did so well at the box office that a sequel is now in the works. Whether that ends up being a good choice remains to be seen, but at least Krasinski is involved with it.
I would be remiss to write about this movie without mentioning the monsters that come whenever someone makes a sound that they can hear. They’re big, terrifying, and relentless as you’ll see throughout the movie. I highly recommend checking out this Vanity Fair article if you want to know more about the actual creation of the creatures. They are well-done and certainly look like something you wouldn’t want to come across ever.
While we really only focus on four characters with a few others popping up along the way, there are little nods to the fact that there are other people out there who are just looking to survive. You’ll always have people who just want to get rid of anyone they see so that they can survive, but there’s a moment where the family sees other fire in the distance and it’s reassuring to know that they aren’t completely alone.
If you’re looking for something to watch this October that doesn’t fall victim to as many of the typical horror tropes, A Quiet Place would be a great option. Krasinski took a movie with a small budget and made something that people kept talking about once it came out. It’ll be interesting to see if the sequel takes the same approach, but at least we all have this one to watch and re-watch in the meantime.
