Its mission statement is suspense and it achieves that in spades.

Rating: 7/10 (7 April 2018)

To say there's essentially no spoken dialogue (or very little, at least), 'A Quiet Place (2018)' tends to rely far more on telling and not showing when it comes to its non-suspense sequences, with the family using sign-language to say how they feel far more often than the flick actually shows it visually. This is probably a product of Krasinski's pass on the script, which added to the original's single line of dialogue, but this admittedly makes for a more commercial movie that keeps its heart, smarts and scares in tact while still reaching as wide an audience as possible. It's just a shame some segments seem ever so slightly 'dumbed down.' It's a good thing, then, that the suspense sequences truly are some of the best, most suspenseful and, incidentally, most visual of recent years. Each set-piece plays the audience like a fiddle and expertly ratchets up the tension using the piece's phenomenal core conceit and brilliantly restrained central techniques. The mission statement clearly is suspense, over overt gore or unearnt scares, and the piece achieves this tenfold. It just feels like some of the surrounding material is slightly lacking, like there's something missing that would compound the experience as something greater than it is. However, this is an extremely confident, competent and compelling effort that will put you on the edge of your seat and keep you there, even during some of its more conventional genre moments or slower segments. It makes you care for its focal family and always keeps them at the centre of its unique world. This makes the scares all the more impactful, and the affair is a focused and powerful one because of it. 7/10