By Katie Cole

Heart racing. Body tensing up. Sweaty palms. Scared to make a sound. Anyone who’s seen A Quiet Place is bound to have experienced these symptoms. Released April 6,  A Quiet Place has everyone talking. It has been at the top of the box office for two weeks now with $132 million in sales and that number will only increase.

A Quiet Place follows the story of the Abbott family, who have a deaf daughter. They live in a post-apocalyptic earth after sightless creatures from an unknown origin have killed off most of the human population. Cheerful, am I right? These creatures hunt by sound which makes every hour the Abbotts live a challenge. To the audience, it’s a really stressful challenge.

What made the movie so unique was the plot. It seems all horror movies these days are the same. Many of them are based off a “true story” about an exorcism, a possessed doll or board game, or a clown. Not A Quiet Place. It was an original idea and although there were times where the fate of the Abbotts seemed predictable, I was always surprised when a jump scare came out of nowhere.

One thing that wasn’t so original was the antagonist: the creatures. The audience doesn’t get a good look at them until about an hour into the film. And when I did finally see one of them, the first thing that came to mind was Stranger Things. They looked just like a mix of the infamous “demogorgon” and also the aliens from Aliens. They weren’t original, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t scary.

The protagonists on the other hand, didn’t disappoint. The movie stars John Krasinski and Emily Blunt who play the parents, Lee and Evelyn. Krasinski also directed the film. Noah Jupe plays Marcus Abbott and Millicent Simmonds is Reagan Abbott. Simmonds is deaf in real life so the entire cast had to learn sign language just for her, which was an interesting addition. The actors were all really good together, they seemed like a real family and they were well developed.

Something even smaller than the cast was the dialogue. There was almost no talking in the entire movie, which had its benefits as well as downfalls. It was cool because it’s nothing like you’ve ever experienced and I felt like I had completed a workout from holding my breath by the time the movie was over. However, the theater was so quiet that it was easy to hear the movie playing next door and I could hear the people around me chewing popcorn and opening candy wrappers. The setting made it very easy to become “that person” in the theater.

When there finally was a sound, it seemed twice as loud as it actually was, which made scares twice as bad. The movie still wasn’t as scary as I expected it to be, it was definitely more of a thriller. Like I said earlier, there were some parts that were predictable.

Also instead of spanning over a longer time period like many movies, A Quiet Place is over the course of three different days, named after the day since the creatures showed up, starting on day 88. Then it skips forward by about 400 days and takes place on two days that seem to revolve around Evelyn Abbott being pregnant, which makes the movie even more stressful because you’re thinking, “How is she going to have a baby that’s going to keep quiet?” Well, you’ll just have to see for yourself.

Overall, I would recommend A Quiet Place to all horror movie fans. It’s new, imaginative, and even a little tear jerking. The movie has it all, and was like nothing I’ve ever seen. I would give A Quiet Place 8 out of 10 rating.