*SPOILERS AHEAD*

A Quiet Place (2018) and Get Out (2017) were the most talked about horror movies of the 2017/18 year. In fact, according to Rotten Tomatoes, Get Out was the highest rated movie in ‘17 and A Quiet Place won Rotten Tomatoes “Golden Tomato” as the best horror movie in ‘18. Get Out took racism and turned it into a horror masterpiece, and A Quiet Place took family protection to the extremes. Each director added a unique element to their film which made people fall in love with it, and each of their successes at the box office was well deserved. A Quiet Place achieved $332,583,447 domestically, while Get Out earned $255,457,364 and stayed in the “Top 10 Box Office Charts” for its first two months of its release.

Each of these films have made it to the Oscars, where Get Out won “Best Original Screenplay”, and A Quiet Place ironically got nominated for “Best Sound Editing” this year. Horror movies seem to find most of their struggle at the box office, and suffer from critics reviews. They tend to take horror movies as a joke which can’t nail a great story, but these two films stuck out nailed the story aspect, fans appreciated them, and reviews were oddly positive. I say oddly because horror movies tend to focus more on scares and actual “horror”, rather than a smoothly flowing story and interesting characters. A Quiet Place and Get Out set the bar insanely high, and future horror movies following their paths will have a hard time surpassing them.  

Get Out was Jordan Peele’s first solo-directed movie, and due to his creative talent it was a hit among horror fans and those who just love a great story. His original story and creative plot twist (which i’ll talk about later) won him an Oscar, and has driven him to stay more “director” focused. Keeping true to that, he has a new film Us coming to  theaters March 22 of this year. John Krasinski had two movies under his belt before taking on A Quiet Place, but he was previously known for his role as Jim Halpert on The Office. He starred in many movies before being approached by Paramount Pictures to direct and star in A Quiet Place.

A Quiet Place managed to create suspense and horror while keeping dialogue to a minimal 25 lines. The way you could feel what these characters were going through without hearing their pain or listening to them interact, was something special. I especially liked the way we never saw the final look of the alien creatures until one of the most suspenseful scenes in the movie. The idea to have them hidden and to not show their design in the trailer just added to the suspense, making us wonder “when will we see them”, or “what do they look like?” According to Krasinski, the final look of the aliens was changed a few times and was finally decided after filming had wrapped. So the actors/actresses had no idea what they were really up against until a rough cut of the film was established. The idea of including a creature to any horror movie is great, but getting the CGI to look creepy and realistic also helps create that eerie tone, and Krasinski did an amazing job with that.

Get Out drove racial stereotypes to the max. A black boyfriend going up to a white family’s house in the middle of the woods? Doesn’t seem too inviting to me. Jordan Peele perfectly executed the idea of (spoilers…duh) an insane white family taking over black men/women and hypnotically removing their conscience. And while leading up to the climax of the film, specific lines and decorations around the family house hinted towards what was to come, but on the first watch you might not notice them. The second time watching this movie I realized how insane the foreshadowing was, and everything said or touched or moved had a specific purpose in the end. That attention to detail is just one of Peele’s many talents, one of which can’t be truly experienced with one run through.

Something important with all good horror movies is having some unexpected plot twist or climax that catches everyone off guard. Both films did an excellent job of including insane plot twists, while still managing to ground it once more. A film could have the best plot twist ever, but if the story can’t come full circle and bring everything back together, then the ending just becomes lazy and the twist doesn’t even matter. Personally, the twists of each movie caught me completely off guard because I was too latched onto the moment and what was going to happen to each character, rather than thinking of what everything could be leading to.

In A Quiet Place, after Krasinski’s character rescues his two kids, I was expecting him to fight the creature while the kids ran home, but the choice of having him sacrifice his life for theirs was so much more heroic and was the most tragic scene in the whole movie.

Jordan Peele’s twist in Get Out is one of my favorite horror movie twists up to this point. After everything unfolded and Chris was sitting in the chair listening to Jim Hudson (the blind man who won the auction on Chris) explain that Chris was going to be Jim’s new body essentially, I was freaking out. It made so much sense why Georgina and Walter (the two black housekeepers) had such weird interactions with people, because they were the grandparents just in a different body! Chris was freaking out, I was freaking out, and hopefully you freaked out too! That kind of twist was such a bold move and it played out perfectly for the rest of the film (Chris had plenty of motive to kill their family, and he does so). In a way, the twist of a movie can make or break it for some people. These movies each had excellent scenes that made the movie some of my favorite horror/suspense movies to this day.

As far as sequels go, both directors have shared their thoughts on that. Peele has currently shared no interest or dismissal of the idea of another Get Out, but the producers at Blumhouse have stated that they would do it in a heartbeat if he approached them with an idea. John Krasinski has come out and said that he is working on a script for his sequel, but has no intentions to star in it. It is unclear if it will continue where the first one left off, with his family going to fight the hoard headed to their home; or if it will take the perspective of another family during the invasion. Either way, I trust that he will make the sequel better than the original and shock us with another entertaining story.

Peele and Krasinski both created amazing visual works of art, and had original stories that carried my attention throughout the whole story. Everything earned (from box office results to awards) was well deserved and the actors/crew did amazing work in producing each film. I can only hope 2019 can bring another horror film just as good or better than these two, so I can have another movie to freak out and talk about.