I've seen a few of these kinds of movies lately, like Bird Box, It Comes at Night, and The Silence. Now, A Quiet Place.

In Bird Box, the alien influence uses your optics to influence you into really becoming its agent against other humans. In It Comes at Night, the drama is more about the stranger who appears at this family's home, but they're all hiding from a contagious outbreak of some kind that turns people into monsters, that we never really see. In The Silence, the threat is an ancient predatory animal, led by sound, that operates in flying swarms, which overtakes and wipes out humanity.

Similar to The Silence, in A Quiet Place, the extraterrestrial monsters have tremendous hearing, but no sight, and unfortunately seem indestructible. Prior to the movie, they seem to have wiped out most of humanity, leaving our little family, and presumably others, who have learned to live in silence.

The film stars and was directed by John Krasinski, who's famously Jim on the American version of The Office. He's recently done a good job in the Amazon series Jack Ryan, as the title character, and isn't the worst Ryan that we've had. He did a fantastic job here, as did everyone else, including the kids.

His wife is played by Emily Blunt, who was outstanding as the title character in Mary Poppins Returns. For much of the movie she's pregnant, which adds a little spice to the film as it progresses.

No real spoilers.

The film starts with the family seeking some goods in a deserted town's pharmacy. In a very clever clue, it's clear that the shelves have been picked clean of everything except the "crinkly" packages, such as snack chip bags. The family tiptoes around, careful of anything they touch, and leveraging sign language to communicate. The rest of the film leans on this, strongly holding the characters to an auditory accountability.

The clever clues, like the snack chips, and the strict silence the family demonstrates throughout the film, really drives home the characters' belief in the real threat. They're clearly doing the best they can to survive, and doing that fairly comfortably, knowing that the creatures that hunt them care only about sound. In their house, there's a fairly sophisticated lab, where we can see additional clues to the creature strengths and the downfall of humankind through newspapers, and the occasional tiny flashback. This is a nice mechanism for providing the bits of pertinent background, without getting caught up in the characters having to somehow tell the story to us, or inundating us with previous information.

One thing that was great for the film, but not awesome for my viewing choice, was that the film is downright silent for the most part. There's little background music or noise. The tiny ticks of leaves teetering in the silent breeze highlights how quiet the characters are. Their use of sign language is thankfully captioned for those of us who don't know it; I would have forgiven the slightest whispers of dialogue, but respect the strict nature of their existence. I did have to rewind the film a bit to catch the dialogue, as I was tinkering with other things for some of it, or would be peeking at the background for tense moments, and would try to see if I missed some during of the flashes of action.

The characters hold through to the end. There are no unbelievable aspects, once you suspend the disbelief of their kind, and number, of aliens in the movie, and the impact it has on the characters. There are literally like seven people in the whole movie, and they all hold true to the story.

There are just a couple of moments that you need to take pause and allow the characters to be the kind of careless or clumsy necessary for the story to progress. Thankfully, they blend mostly well with the otherwise super-careful nature of the situation.

Overall, great thriller, good Sci-Fi, fantastic story commitment and acting by all. The cinematography keeps you engaged, and adds to the intrigue and suspense.