Is A Quiet Place a Rip-off?

I've been seeing previews for a while now of a movie called A Quiet Place.  Due to be released in theaters on April 6th, I have not had a chance to see it yet.

However, since the very first time I saw the preview something about this movie has bugged me to no end.


In the preview we see a family which must be very, very quiet at all times.  Because there is something out there that hunts them if they make a sound.  Any sound.

I kept thinking, "I've read that book!"  But I couldn't think of the name of the book.

So tonight I went digging on the internet and found out that "A Quiet Place" isn't based on a book.
A Quiet Place is about a family trying to survive in a world that is post-apocalypse.  A creature hunts them if they make a sound.  And looking further into it turns out that one of the children is deaf so the family already knew sign language and all that good stuff to give them a small but slightly better chance at knowing how to survive in silence.

Nothing about it being based on a book though, which confused me because I KNOW the story.  I READ the story.  But I couldn't remember the name of it.  So I kept typing what I remembered of the story into google until I found it.


In the novel, The Silence by Tim Lebbon (published in April of 2015) havoc has been wreaked on the world by creatures which.... hunt by sound!

It follows a family trying to survive in a world where they are being hunted by creatures who hunt by sound.  The slightest sound means death.  Also, and huge surprise here, the daughter in the story is deaf, so the family knows sign language and has the ability to communicate in silence already.

Judging by what little we see of the creature in the preview for A Quiet Place it is vastly different from the Vesps (the winged creatures who hunt the family in The Silence), but the rest of the story appears too close to the novel for the novel to have not gotten credit.

In some communication on the author's page I see I am not the only person who feels uncomfortable with how similar they film and the novel are.  The author says he is aware of the film and he also  says:

Hi Folks … thanks for your comments and concerns. There are similarities, of course, but I’m confident that the movie of The Silence will stand on its own. It’s going to be epic!
It is a little troubling, but I guess that’s all I can say about it.

Meanwhile, The Silence itself is in pre-production.  Yep, it's being turned into a movie.

I can see it now though when The Silence comes out in film version a whole bunch of people are going to be angry because they are going to be SURE that it's ripping off A Quiet Place.

What do you think? Coincidence or not?

I guess I'll have to wait until I see the film to pass final judgment, but that preview sure does make it feel fishy to me.