A Quiet Place is a 2018 psychological thriller/horror movie. The story follows a family in a post-apocalyptic world where monsters who survive off of sound only hunt people down for food. Camera angles that were seen a lot include eye level, low angle, high angle, and aerial. Eye and high angle were of the most abundant. The low and high angles were mostly viewed when the camera was trying to show the kids' or parents' perspectives. The aerial angle could be seen mostly when the family was traveling. The most common camera movements were tracking and pan. These are also the most typical movements for horror movies in general. Occasionally, you can see some tilt movements, for example when looking the monster up and down, but these were not nearly as common. The camera shots I noticed the most were wide, medium, close up, establishing, long, over the shoulder, two-shots, and one-shots. These also fit very well with the conventions for a horror film. The costumes here are very simplistic, but with one stand out difference. They wear normal clothes, most are old and they wear long pants and sweaters and hats, but they do not wear shoes. They do this in order to stay as quiet as possible. The lighting is fairly bright and natural, they have lanterns for the nighttime but the majority of the time, there is outside light shining in. There is also a lighting they put on the monsters to make them more distorted. The actors/characters consist of a husband and wife and their children. There are two sons and one daughter, but unfortunately the youngest son dies after getting attacked by one of the monsters. Later on the wife ends up having another son. Makeup in this movie is little to none, there is some on the wife, but the only other time would be if they had dirt or bruises. The various props here are the toy airplane, guns, stuffed animals, and the bathtub, to name a few. The story begins in a deserted town in a grocery store. When they cross the bridge, a prominent place in the story, is when the youngest son dies. They then move on to the house they decide to move into where they create an underground sound-proof safe house. There is also a large field right outside of the house. The editing here is very simple. There are many cross cuts, jumpcuts, cutaways, and eye-line matches. We see the jumpcuts when they go from 89 days to 173 days to 439 days. This way we see the passage of time even without watching what happens during the time. There is also a lot of cross-cutting so we can see what the different characters are doing all at the same time, but in different places. The sound is the most important part of the movie. It is famous for its lack of sound. It is quiet until some sort of loud noise comes in, like a picture dropping or fireworks. There is a lot of diegetic sound in this film. From the monsters to the toy airplane to the birds, everything. The non-diegetic sounds include incidental music, sound motif, and score. There is always some sort of suspenseful, intense instrumental playing when something important is happening. Other than that, we do not see much score. As for the sound motif, every time a monster approaches we hear a certain clicking sound. This is how we know they are nearby. There is some dialogue in the movie. When the dad and son are at the waterfall and right after the baby is born in the safe house. They use sign language most of the time. There is definitely a lot of foreshadowing here. The 4 year old boy is seen playing with a toy airplane that makes noise, and he is later killed when it draws a nearby monster's attention. Also, there is a nail in the basement stairs that gets caught on the laundry bag that later goes into the wife's foot when she goes into labor, also drawing the attention of the monster. This movie builds suspense in that there is no sound until a loud one appears for a jump scare. I really like these two elements because they create meanings that the viewer creates a story around. We know when something has meaning, but what really is the meaning? There is also a fear aspect. We see this when the monster creeps up on the characters and they have to stare right at it while being perfectly silent. I do not like this aspect because of how it builds in my mind and becomes a real, scary thing.
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