A Quiet Place

The apocalypse movie is not dead. You might not have heard it here first, but A Quiet Place, John Krasinski’s third work in the director’s chair, has brought it back from the un-dead. Starring Emily Blunt and Krasinski as doting parents in a world where there is a premium on silence, this is definitely a film for which to keep your ears pricked up.

In their country idyll, Krasinski, Blunt, and their children (one of whom is hearing-impaired) live in perpetual terror of blind creatures sensitive to sound. This tyranny of silence runs through the entirety of the picture and keeps you as hyper-vigilant to the sound of a pin dropping as the characters are. In this unsettling quietness, where a sparing script interlaced with sign-language foreground the void, your horror senses are most definitely heightened. You could watch this film blindfolded and still be scared.

The film’s ingenious and original conceit not only raises the stakes for the actors but also gives Krasinski a chance to help set a new course for what is sometimes a hackneyed set-piece genre. More than anything, A Quiet Place is a testament to the fact that you don’t need blood and gore and chaos to make people scream: it’s in the unremitting suspense it creates with very little that this movie really outdoes itself. Wave The Walking Dead goodbye, as A Quiet Place ruins you for other horrors for a long time.

The film makes positive comments on disability and female roles in a genre where more often than not young women are first on the hit-list, and should be lauded for doing so. It is clear that what Krasinski had in mind was a piece of actually cinematically engaging horror that is no cheap thrill, and he ticks that box with flying colours.  

Daniel Amir

A Quiet Place is released nationwide on 5^th April 2018.

Watch the trailer for A Quiet Place here: