Is A Quiet Place Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot
Somewhat, 4 out of 10. It's mostly held breath, with some very loud jump scares.
🐱THE SCARE SIGNAL
SCARE SCORE
4 /10
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
DREAD LEVEL
Medium
You'll notice how loud your own kitchen is for about a day.
DOG
Dog: fine
no dog, and don't ask about the raccoon.
Ruling: It is ninety minutes of whispering with some very loud monsters, and most teenagers handle it fine.
A Quiet Place runs ninety-one minutes, and the family in it barely says a word for most of them. Creatures that hunt by sound have taken over, so everyone talks in sign language and walks barefoot on paths of sand.
The premise, briefly
A family survives a world of blind, sound-hunting creatures by staying silent on their farm, which gets a lot harder once a baby is on the way.
How much do you want to know?
🐱
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
🐱CUT TO THE CHASE
How it ends
Lee shouts to draw a creature away from Regan and Marcus and doesn't survive it. Regan works out that the whine from her hearing aid hurts the creatures, Evelyn shoots one in the head, and the family loads up as more arrive.
The scene you're dreading
The early scene where the youngest son, Beau, switches on a noisy toy space shuttle on the walk home and a creature takes him before his father can reach him. It happens early, so the worst is over before the story gets going.
The dog
There's no dog in A Quiet Place. A raccoon does get crushed by a creature on screen, if that matters to you.
Most of A Quiet Place is quiet tension, and the loud moments lose most of their sting once you know where they are.
THE SHORT VERSION IS HIDDEN
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
Batteries not included
Blind creatures with superb hearing and armored skin have killed most of the world. The Abbott family (Lee, Evelyn, their deaf daughter Regan, and their sons Marcus and Beau) survive on a farm outside Millbrook, New York, by never making a sound: they walk on sand paths and talk in American Sign Language. On a supply run into town, Beau, the youngest, picks up a toy space shuttle. Lee takes the batteries out and tells him to leave it behind. Regan hands him the toy anyway, and Beau quietly takes the batteries too. On the walk home he switches it on, and a creature kills him before Lee can get to him. This is the scene that catches people off guard, and it happens early. Regan blames herself and hides it from her parents, though Marcus can tell.
More than a year later, Evelyn is pregnant. Lee keeps trying to build Regan a hearing aid that works, and every attempt only produces a high-pitched squeal. He takes a reluctant Marcus fishing, and Regan, annoyed at being left out, goes to Beau's grave. Home alone, Evelyn goes into labor, steps on a nail sticking up on her way to the basement, and drops a picture frame. A creature hears it and comes inside. She flips a switch that turns the lights around the house red, distracts the creature with an egg timer, and gets upstairs. Lee sees the red lights from outside and sends Marcus to set off fireworks as a decoy, which buys Evelyn enough quiet to have the baby.
Grain silos are also dangerous
Lee hides Evelyn and the newborn in a hiding spot under the barn floor. The baby cries, a creature comes into the barn, and although it can't find them, it breaks the water pipes and floods their hiding place, so Evelyn has to hide behind the falling water. Meanwhile Marcus and Regan light a signal fire on top of a grain silo. Marcus falls through the roof into the corn, Regan jumps in after him and gets sucked under, and Marcus pulls her out by the hand. A creature tears into the silo after them, and Regan's hearing aid lets out a whine that sends it reeling and breaks the silo open, which lets the two of them out.
The ending, explained
Lee finds the kids and gets them into his truck, but a creature wounds him, and Marcus can't stop himself from screaming. Lee tells Regan in sign language that he loves her and always has, then yells to pull the creature toward himself while Marcus and Regan coast the truck back to the house. Lee doesn't make it. Back with Evelyn and the baby, Regan's hearing aid misfires near a creature again, and this time she understands what she's seeing: she holds it up to a microphone, the amplified noise makes the creature expose the soft spot under its armor, and Evelyn kills it with Lee's shotgun. More creatures heard the shot and are on their way. The movie ends on Evelyn loading the next shell, with the family finally holding a weapon that works.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: no dog, and don't ask about the raccoon.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is A Quiet Place scary?
Somewhat. A Quiet Place is a 4 out of 10: mostly quiet tension, with some very loud jump scares and not much gore, and most teenagers handle it fine.
How does A Quiet Place end?
Lee dies drawing a creature away from his children. Regan realizes the whine from her hearing aid hurts the creatures, Evelyn kills one with a shotgun, and the family gets ready for the rest.
Does the dog die in A Quiet Place?
No, because there's no dog in A Quiet Place. The only animal that dies is a raccoon, which a creature crushes on screen.
Is there a post-credits scene in A Quiet Place?
No. A Quiet Place has no post-credits scene, so you can leave when the credits start.
What are the creatures in A Quiet Place?
Blind aliens with extremely sharp hearing and armor-plated skin that have killed most of humanity. In A Quiet Place their weak spot turns out to be high-pitched noise, which makes them expose the soft tissue on their heads.
BLURRED FOR YOUR PROTECTION
The whole plot of A Quiet Place is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
You don't need to hold your breath for ninety minutes to know how A Quiet Place ends. Install Scaredy Cat and the internet's horror gets blurred before you see it.
