SC-S28/W4-Movie Highlights|Genre Flip: A Quiet Place

_{Edited by Canva}

Hello my dear Steemians,

Recently I came across this new challenge by @ruthjoe about movies and the theme immediately caught my attention, because it invites us to step away from the safe little island of our favourite genres and swim into waters we normally avoid, so I decided to join and share my own experience and here is the link to the contest post.

There are definitely some movie genres that we run to with open arms and others that we quietly walk past as if they do not exist, and since I was younger I have always preferred adventure, crime and mystery stories with complicated plots, where you are never sure who is the villain and who is the hero until the very last moment, and that constant guessing kept me glued to the screen from beginning to end. Horror, on the other hand, was like a forbidden zone for me, I remember that even a short scary scene in a normal movie was enough to give me bad dreams, so I simply built a rule in my head that said “no horror, never”, and I stuck to it faithfully.

For this challenge, however, I decided that if I really wanted to play fairly with the idea of a “genre flip”, I had to confront that rule directly, so I chose to watch A Quiet Place, a horror-thriller that many people had recommended to me but that I constantly refused to try, and I prepared myself for a movie evening that I suspected would be full of tension, closed eyes and possibly a pillow in front of my face.

_{My preparations before watching the movie}

Why don’t you usually watch this genre?

I usually avoid horror movies because they do not stay locked inside the television screen once they finish, they follow me into my room, into the corridor at night, into every shadow and strange sound, and my imagination starts working overtime, creating monsters out of the simplest things, which affects my sleep and my peace of mind, so it never felt worth it to be so scared for “entertainment”. Another reason is that many horror films I have glimpsed in the past seemed to rely only on blood, sudden loud noises and ugly creatures jumping at the camera, and I did not see much story or emotion behind all that noise, which made me think that this genre was shallow and only designed to shock. Because of that combination of emotional discomfort and prejudice, horror became something I automatically skipped, just like some people automatically skip the news.

Did this movie change your mind or confirm your feelings?

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When I started watching “A Quiet Place”, I was already tense, waiting for the first cheap jump scare, but instead I found a strangely quiet and intimate film about a family trying to survive in a world where deadly creatures hunt anything that makes noise, and from the first scenes I felt that this was not the kind of horror I had imagined, it was more like a very emotional drama wrapped inside a frightening situation. The film made me realise that horror can be subtle and even delicate, because the fear did not come only from monsters, but from the constant effort of the parents to protect their children, the guilt they carried, the sacrifices they were willing to make, and I found myself moved, not only scared. So this movie did change my mind in an important way, it proved that horror can also be meaningful, beautiful and deeply human, although it also confirmed that my heart still beats too fast during tense scenes.

What surprised you most about the film?

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What surprised me the most was how powerful silence could be when used as a central element of the story, because the characters rarely speak and yet the emotions are very loud, every tiny sound, like a toy on the floor or a footstep on the wrong place, suddenly becomes life-threatening, and I realised how noisy our normal life is compared to the world of this movie. I was also impressed by the way the movie shows the daughter, who is deaf, and how sign language and quiet communication, which might be considered a limitation in another context, actually becomes a tool of survival for the whole family, and that gave the film an unexpected layer of tenderness and representation, the scene that stayed with me the most is when the father and daughter finally express their feelings in the middle of all that danger, and the horror outside the house contrasts with the love and pain inside, and I understood then that I was not just watching people being hunted, I was watching a family trying not to fall apart.

Would you try more movies from this genre in the future and why?

Really, after this great experience I would say that I am more open to trying horror or thriller movies in the future, but with some conditions, because I now know that I can appreciate films from this genre that focus on atmosphere, strong characters and emotional depth rather than just endless violence and cheap scares, so I will look for stories similar in spirit to “A Quiet Place”, where fear is used to explore relationships, sacrifice and human resilience.