Warning: This review will contain spoilers for the movie A Quiet Place. If you haven't seen the movie as of yet and don't want your experience of the movie spoiled, I would suggest watching the movie before reading this review.

As soon as A Quiet Place was announced, the hype for it seemed to increase in a crescendo. Any conversation regarding movies during the month of April was somehow brought back to this movie, which is especially surprising when it’s considered that A Quiet Place is John Krasinski’s first experience directing, but despite this, Krasinski does an amazing job at creating a terrifying atmosphere and transporting you into the post-apocalyptic world which he has created. The movie, which is almost entirely silent, allows you to fully understand what the characters are going through as they avoid the grotesque and other-worldly creatures who hunt based off sounds. By opting to not include a musical score for most of the movie, Krasinski easily encapsulates the audience into just how awful it must be to live in a world like this for years, always having to be conscious of the noises that you make, and it is clear through every second as an audience member. The tension which the silence of this movie creates is nearly incomparable in horror movies of the decade and only increases as the movie goes on, especially during the scene where Krasinski's character must rush back to his pregnant wife. Additionally, every single actor in this movie does an amazing job, and all their performances are extremely realistic. Millicent Simmonds, a deaf actor, portrays her character amazingly, and it’s great to see someone who knows what being deaf is like firsthand portraying a character who must overcome the same obstacle. The movie also goes to great lengths to create smart characters who make the most of their situation. This is surprisingly uncommon among many of the horror and thriller movies of today and shows that the environment of this movie was extremely carefully thought out, rather than ignored for a stronger focus on the plot. There are a lot of subtle touches like this throughout the movie, such as the trails of sand to reduce the sound which footsteps make to ensure that the monsters in the movie could not hear the characters.

 Not everything is thought out quite as well, however. There are more than a few instances which, sadly, result in major plot holes due to the events of the scene not being as carefully planned as they could be. Towards the end of the movie, Krasinski’s character and his children are getting chased by one of the monsters, so Krasinski instructs his children to leave the sand trail and head towards a car for safety, although it makes no sense as to why this is any safer than staying on the path (which has already been shown to be purposefully made to reduce sound.) This would have been fine on its own, but this problem results in the death of one of the main characters and due to this seems like it was purposefully set up to create a reason for the character to die, bogging down the entire film as a result. Another situation which could have used more thought occurs towards the middle of the movie, when Krasinski’s character is nearby a waterfall and yells, showing his son that, if they are near something louder than them, that talking and smaller sounds are not to be worried about. This scene would be fine if it didn’t ruin the entirety of the conflict from beforehand. If Krasinski’s character and his family knew about this situation, why didn’t they just always stay by the waterfall to avoid being in a conflict such as this to begin with? Why wouldn’t these characters deduce that they could simply go near a louder sound all the time rather than setting up fireworks to use just in case something was to happen? Although this is a little bit of a nitpick, these characters were shown to be smart enough to work around many of the other problems which are created by this environment, so it makes no sense to me as to why they would not realize this as well.

A Quiet Place is definitely worth watching in theaters if only for the experience. The feeling of having to stay quiet along with the characters is something I haven’t a lot of in movies, and the environment the film creates remains astounding. However, the incredible amount of plot holes which surround this movie and the smart-sometimes-dumb-the-next characters hold it back from being as amazing as a lot of people have described it as.