A Quiet Place 4K/Blu Ray Review (Paramount)

A Quiet Place is a 2018 horror film co-starring, co-written, produced, & directed by John Krasinski (The Office, The Hollars, & Brief Interviews with Hideous Men). It was produced by Platinum Dunes: Michael Bay (Transformers franchise, Bad Boys franchise, The Purge franchise, & Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise), Brad Fuller (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre/The Beginning, The Amityville Horror, Friday the 13th, & A Nightmare on Elm Street), & Andrew Form (The Hitcher, The Unborn, Ouija series, & Jack Ryan). At one point, it was considered to be included as a Cloverfield installment. The director played the monster in a motion capture suit for a few scenes. The original screenplay contained only one line of dialogue. It was made on a budget of $17 million & it ended up grossing $331.3 million worldwide at the box office. A sequel is already in development.

Over three months in 2020, most of Earth’s human population has been wiped out by sightless creatures with hypersensitive hearing & a seemingly impenetrable armored shell that attack anything that makes noise. The Abbotts which include wife Evelyn (played by: Emily Blunt from The Wolfman, Wind Chill, Wild Target, & Sunshine Cleaning), husband Lee (played by: John Krasinski from Jack Ryan, Jarhead, Aloha, & 13 Hours), congenitally deaf daughter Regan (played by: Millicent Simmonds from Wonderstruck), sons Marcus (played by: Noah Jupe from Suburbicon & Wonder), & Beau (played by: Cade Woodward) are doing their best to survive in this disastrous situation. They avoid sound at all costs to stay safe from the monsters that lurk around so they use American Sign Language. Unfortunately, a tragedy occurs & they are forced to take even more precautions. A year later, the family struggles with their pain & tries to keep it together to keep living without running into their dangerous enemies. Evelyn is pregnant & she is just trying to make everything secure before the baby is born. They found a dead woman outside & see her husband (played by: Leon Russom from Prison Break, True Grit, The Big Lebowski, & The Phantom) traumatized near the body. They try to warn him to keep quiet but he explodes with emotions & screams to the attract the murderous beasts. The Abbotts run for their lives to get away from the creatures. They get split up & must test their strengths against this non stop terror that won’t stop. Is their time up? Can this family survive again?

Yes, it’s been done before in the past but only by a few. This was the biggest & first experience for most people. How do you carry an entire film with barely any spoken dialogue?  A Quiet Place manages to pull that off with no problem. The small cast is very strong in this. The children were way better than expected. It should no surprise since they are married in real life but John Krasinski & Emily Blunt’s chemistry was amazing. Believe it or not, a decent amount of actual couples are not that good together on screen so this was great to see. For it being mainly a silent film it had so much suspense & thrills. The atmosphere was damn near perfect & it made the material more intense. It was well crafted & the score really elevated those moments. This is one of those productions where the music is beyond important to the final product. It might sound a little funny but it kinda a Terminator vibe to it. This was a pretty unique experience especially for the horror genre. It proves you can achieve anything with the right cast & crew for a project. It’s very hard to do something like this. It truly stands out from all the others in the genre. I also enjoyed how it still left lots of mystery & curiosity for possible future sequels which can expand this universe. I was pleased to see a major studio like Paramount take a chance & produce a feature that resemble everything else around. HIGHLY recommended for any cinema fans!!!!

Let’s talk about the high definition presentation from Paramount Pictures. This 2160p (2.40:1) transfer shines in 4K! The visual style for A Quiet Place commands a release like this. I was really impressed with everything on here. The locations & visual effects look top notch. It features 10 different audio tracks which include English: Dolby Atmos, English: Dolby TrueHD 7.1, German: Dolby Digital 5.1 , Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1, French: Dolby Digital 5.1, French (Canada): Dolby Digital 5.1, Italian: Dolby Digital 5.1, Hungarian: Dolby Digital 5.1, Polish: Dolby Digital 5.1, & Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1 on this release! For being a silent or atleast almost no spoken dialogue these tracks sound awesome in my home set up. The film makers made sure to enhance everything else when it came to sound on this production. The suspenseful & intense thrills are highlighted with it. Like I said earlier, the musical score by Marco Beltrami (Scream franchise, Resident Evil, Logan, & Terminator 3) is very powerful & it’s almost like it’s own character in the film. It’s definitely the best & my favorite thing about the audio on this UHD. It also features 28 different subtitles options which include English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Korean, Malay, Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Swedish, Thai,  & Turkish.

Let’s discuss the special features on the blu ray disc, there’s none on the actual 4K. “Reading the Quiet — Behind the Scenes of A Quiet Place” is almost 15 minutes. It goes over the original script for the production. They chat about how they put together a film without much dialogue. It shows appreciation to John Krasinski who had many different jobs on this feature. It focuses on locations from it. It also talks about John Krasinski & Emily Blunt real life marriage & how it worked for this. “The Sound of Darkness — Editing Sound for A Quiet Place” is almost 12 minutes. It highlights how important sound design is considering A Quiet Place barely has any spoken dialogue. It mentions the unique working conditions on set for this. It also goes into the sound effects for the film. It brings up my favorite subject about the audio featured in this project. The score by  Marco Beltrami which was a key factor to make everything come together. “A Reason for Silence — The Visual Effects of A Quiet Place” is a little over 7 minutes. It’s main attention is focused on the monsters that kept this film intense & full of thrills. It’s a inside look on how they were created & put together for this. If you are looking for something different, you need to check this out ASAP! It’s available everywhere & a good change of pace for the horror genre.