How do you make a horror film that avoids sound?
Let's take a look at the opening of "A Quiet Place"
to see how John Krasinski both establishes a world
and puts on a master class in tension building
with one near-perfect 10-minute sequence.
With just one title card
and four corresponding shots,
Krasinski achieves the first role of an opening:
establishing the world.
And how "A Quiet Place" achieves this
is through minimal visual exposition.
Although they might seem pretty random,
the five opening images actually tell you
all there is to know about the world.
The title card hints at a major event
that has occurred before the film,
and the next three consecutive shots affirm
and establish a post-apocalyptic world.
In fact, these minimal visual expositions
are everywhere,
from a child's drawing that hints
at the creatures' extraterrestrial origins
to a newspaper
that explicitly states what the danger is.
Choosing to leave more out than in
lends the film a sense of mystery
while offering the bare minimum
of information to follow the plot.
The second role of an opening is
identifying the visual language.
Every film has a unique style and tone
in which it tells a story.
In the case of "A Quiet Place,"
that languages is "show, don't tell."
This technique is most evident in
the opening sequence mentioned prior.
The title card establishes a specific time frame,
and the next three consecutive shots establish
that law and order have collapsed.
People have abandoned their homes,
and society is in ruin.
Finally, a wall of missing people signifies
that danger is still lurking in the corners.
Contrary to popular belief,
"A Quiet Place" does not take inspiration
from the classic silent films,
but rather modern visual films.
While silent films that physically lack sound
rely on exaggerated visuals, emotions,
and movements to keep the audience's attention,
visual films ignore the present sound
to rely on simple, yet precise shots and edits
to visually convey information.
Krasinski refers to two main sources of inspiration,
the Coen brothers' "No Country for Old Men"
and Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood."
The latter also features
a 14-minute opening sequence
with no spoken dialogue that can also be
entirely understood without any sound.
Take a closer look at their respective screenplays,
and the similarities are even more obvious.
Visual films rely on these long and specific
scene descriptions that visualize almost everything,
from the props to the movement of the characters,
the tempo of the edits,
and even the direction of the camera.
This unique "show, don't tell" approach
can be identified everywhere.
Instead of having to explain the daughter's disability,
all we need is a single close-up.
Want to establish that making a sound can be dangerous?
This is all you need to show.
This is also the reason why the film
relies so heavily on reaction shots,
more specifically, characters reacting to one another.
While a line that clearly expresses
a character's emotion might be more convenient,
sometimes a gaze or a change in expression
can be enough to deliver it more convincingly.
In fact, the opening is chock-full of these reaction shots,
which establish the relationship between the characters
and convey a range of emotions,
like affection, sadness, fear,
and, ultimately, dread.
Which brings us to the final
and most important rule of an opening:
engaging the audience.
In a horror film like "A Quiet Place,"
that's usually achieved by scaring the audience.
Except this film has a crucial
limitation in that department.
[alarm ticking]
Sound.
Take any scene from a horror film...
and watch it without sound.
And it will most likely never feel as scary.
To get around this limitation,
Krasinski chooses tension over an outright scare.
Sometimes it's as simple as showing
who we need to worry about right from the first image.
After visually associating sound with danger,
Krasinski delivers three key moments
that gradually build in tension,
and they are all achieved in the most brilliant way:
by not showing themselves,
whether it's the sister jumping in out of nowhere
to catch a falling toy at the last second
or the family gripped in fear by something
the boy is holding that we can't see.
Krasinski cleverly uses the film's
"show, don't tell" approach
to deliver a unique sort of tension.
Of the entire 10 minutes,
almost a minute and a half is dedicated to
this sort of tension building
up until the final moment.
The boy, whom the audience already knows
will be the source of trouble,
is shot only from a distance or partially hidden
until that dreadful noise begins offscreen.
[toy beeping]
For even heavier impact,
the reveal happens twice:
once through the ears of the parents
and then through the perspective of the mute sister,
who visually confirms the present danger.
And as the film kills off the most innocent
and powerless of the bunch,
the audience is once again reminded
of the gravity of the danger
and the fact that anyone can die at any moment.
[yelling]
The reason why the opening
to "A Quiet Place" is so brilliant
is that it allows the film to go anywhere,
establishing its unique world, rules, characters,
and their struggles and traumas
all in under 10 minutes.
Because the role of an opening
is not to open just the film,
but to open its story to unlimited possibilities
for its audience to enjoy.
[gun cocking]