Fairly admirable, but ends up coming off as a bit of a send up of itself

Rating: 4/10 (22 April 2018)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
The Abbotts, including pregnant mother Evelyn (Emily Blunt), father Lee (John Krasinski), daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and son Marcus (Noah Jupe) are a small nuclear family living in seclusion after a big disaster has wiped out most of America. Wherever they go, they must travel in total silence, communicating only in a form of sign language they have developed amongst themselves, or else some big, weird spider-like thingees will jump out of nowhere and kill them. Having already lost a son to the monsters, the family must do what they can to survive...
I recently read (well, glanced, I really must get round to reading it!) an article entitled: is Horror Dead? It would seem the genre has hit something of a stalemate, both in literature terms and in on screen creativity. It seems new writers and producers are now coming up with the most desperate ideas, as in the case with this high concept offering that plays out well into the half way point in almost total silence, with all dialogue between the characters appearing on screen in subtitles. This idea has been explored before (most notably during the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey) but here it just comes off as lamentably far fetched and silly.
The main problem with this idea of no one speaking, is it affects the film's ability, in the opening part, to truly develop characters you can care about and root for to survive. It does manage to create a reasonably creepy atmosphere and feeling of suspense, in regards to just what these big, bad creatures are that everybody's got to avoid, but when they are revealed, it just emerges as even more ridiculous. Less than two thirds of the way in, the whole silly idea has just become overwhelmingly ripe for parody, and pretty much impossible to take seriously.
The thing that niggles you the most is, this is set around modern times America and then slightly into the future, but if Trump isn't going to take any cr*p from ISIS hundreds of miles away, why's he going to take it from some big, ugly spider thingees that like to jump out of nowhere and kill people? Why hasn't he just "bombed the cr*p out of them?" You know he would. **