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16 Behind-the-Scenes Facts About “A Quiet Place” That Make It a Masterpiece

Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures

“A Quiet Place” is a horror film starring John Krasinski and Emily Blunt. Krasinski, who is most famous for playing Jim Halpert on NBC’s “The Office,” also co-wrote and directed the project.

The film revolves around two parents trying to keep themselves and their two children from being killed by aliens who use sound to hunt. The whole film is acted out in silence, and it garnered rave reviews at Sundance.

1. It’s all about the details

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There are actual family photos of both John Krasinski and Emily Blunt (who are married in real life) and their children used throughout the film.

2. Once you pop…

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Early in the movie, you can see that most of the food from the store shelves is gone – except for the bags of chips since they make way too much noise to open/eat.

3. Authentic portrayal

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Millicent Simmonds, the brilliant young actor who plays Regan, the family’s deaf daughter, is actually deaf in real life. Krasinski actually insisted on a deaf actor for the part.

4. Different signs

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Being deaf, Simmonds actually picked up on subtle differences between Krasinski and Blunt’s way of signing. In an interview with the Independent, Kransinski explained, “Millie pointed out that my character is very shut off and just wants to survive and his signing is very curt, it’s very small, it’s very immediate and direct. Emily’s character is all about, ‘We can’t just survive, there has to be beauty in the world. We have to give a life to our children.’ So she’s very warm and she’s bigger and she’s more affectionate in her signing.”

5. For crown and country

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Noah Jupe, the actor who plays the family’s son, Noah, is actually British – not that he or his fellow Brit on set, Emily Blunt, had many lines to potentially expose their accents.

6. Great references

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Noah was actually recommended to Krasinski by none other than George Clooney, who had previously directed Noah in “Suburbicon.”

7. One take wonder

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One of the film’s most intense scenes, where Blunt’s character hides from the aliens in the bathtub while having contractions from childbirth, was shot in a single take.

8. The sounds of silence

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With a movie that relies so heavily on silence, the sound editors had to get pretty creative. They devised the idea of “sound envelopes” to let you hear what each character hears and how they hear it (such as a much more muffled sound for the deaf character of Regan).

9. Mysterious creature

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The final look of the creature wasn’t actually completed until the film was already in post-production, meaning even the actors were surprised when they first saw it on screen.

10. From novice to master

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Ironically, before he made this critically-acclaimed horror masterpiece, Krasinski was not a fan of horror films at all.

11. Doing the research

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In order to prepare for the film, Krasinski watched just about every great horror movie he could get his hands on, including recent hits like The Witch The Babadook, and Get Out. He made it a point to write down what elements made him nervous, explaining, “Instead of visual style, it was about when I started to get tense. I started drawing out the tension in a different way, because of how it affected me.”

12. Love of classics

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Krasinski cites 1979’s Alien as being especially influential, due in large part to how invested he felt in the character of Ripley.

13. Making demands

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After she finished reading the finished script, Blunt told Krasinski that he had to cast her in the role of Evelyn. Being married to him certainly didn’t hurt her chances, but Krasinski says he took it as a genuine compliment.

14. Working couple

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In an interview with the BBC, Krasinski says that working with his wife on a project that required such intimacy was “the best collaboration of [his] career.”

15. It’s a metaphor

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The whole film is a metaphor for the fears every parent feels. Krasinski says, “We had just had our second daughter three weeks before I read the script, and so I was living with the terror of hoping to keep her safe, hoping to keep her alive. Was I a good enough man to be her father? All those themes are in the movie. And so, in my rewrite, that’s what I drilled down to even more.”

16. High praise

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The film has received the gushing praise of none other than the King of Horror himself, Stephen King.

h/t: BuzzFeed

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