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(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n
Tue 30 September 2025 13:15, UK <\/p>\n
In 2018, Paul Thomas Anderson<\/a> sat in rapt silence in his local ArcLight Theatre in Los Angeles, staring up at a thrillingly tense horror movie playing out on the big screen.<\/p>\n After a while, Anderson began to notice something<\/a> which isn\u2019t often the case in cinemas, and especially not ones packed to the rafters with people. As he gazed around at everyone else in the screening, each one with their eyes glued to the screen, he realised nobody was making a sound. Couple that with the fact that the movie itself featured long stretches of agonising silence, and suddenly he felt like the quiet was so profound that it was almost like it was making its own kind of noise. <\/p>\n \u201cEverybody was completely quiet to the point where you could really hear the silence,\u201d Anderson told The Los Angeles Times. \u201cIt\u2019s so loud, the silence, and it\u2019s not something you\u2019re used to in movies.\u201d<\/p>\n What movie was Anderson watching that provoked such a strong reaction in its audience, though? Well, it was a film directed by and starring longtime friends of Anderson and his wife, Maya Rudolph. However, this familiarity had absolutely no bearing on how impressed the iconic There Will Be Blood director was with the sheer power the film demonstrated. <\/p>\n He knew A Quiet Place was a finely tuned piece of filmmaking that perfectly exploited its central conceit \u2013 a family has to stay completely silent to avoid being killed by monstrous aliens \u2013 to make an aural, visual masterpiece of modern horror<\/a>. It just so happened that his buddy John Krasinski directed and starred in it, alongside his wife Emily Blunt, who Anderson\u2019s kids affectionately called \u2018Mary Poppins\u2019 long before she starred in a remake of that children\u2019s classic. <\/p>\n For Anderson, who was so taken with the film that he later hosted a private screening for the benefit of Academy voters, the best aspect of A Quiet Place was how it transformed on the big screen in front of a jam-packed audience. He knew that the movie would also be a good watch at home, but there was a unique alchemy at play when viewed as a communal experience, in a darkened theatre, with everyone giving their full attention. Suddenly, with no smartphones or other distractions, every heart-in-mouth close call and every nail-biting attempt to hide from the spindly-legged aliens became so heightened that an entire crowd of people could hear a pin drop.<\/p>\n