A silent masterpiece

Rating: 8/10 (5 April 2018)

This review of A Quiet Place is spoiler free
**** (4/5)
JUST TO THINK, it was only as recent as last year when a person would emerge from an extensive comedy background to direct a horror film - it was, of course, writer-director Jordan Peele who before his box-office breaking, Best Picture nominated debut Get Out he was known for his eccentric comedy outbursts with his co-worker and best friend Keegan-Michael Key on the Emmy winning show Key and Peele. Now - just over a year later we get John Krasinski who like Peele is known for various comedy shows (most notably The Office USA) and his latest film A Quiet Place - which, in short, is a spine-tingling, nerve-shredding horror that ultimately refuses to let up from start to finish.
The premise is pure monster horror - the cataclysm after these monsters have invaded is on a global scale, it's a high-concept monster movie works by simply narrowing it's focus...survival. And just as the human characters (what about the monsters? We'll get to them) try to muffle out the sound by shuffling sand along the floor and making their own home quiet enough to walk around, director Krasinski (who also co-stars and writes) with writers Bryan Woods and Scott Beck keep a tight-knit, all-frills locked specifically on tension that just keeps on building up and up until the ladder just can't be seen any more. Krasinski however isn't afraid to assume you already know an outcome by opening the film on the 90th day of the invasion clearly avoiding the manic-day-one tactic (where we can probably guess a lot of bad stuff happened), no, he approaches the subject with experienced characters. Paths have been set with sand, cars have been abandoned, and his house has been completely sound proofed, with carpets, sand set like stepping stones and the family only communicates by sign language.

Krasinski plays a competent, intelligent, desperate family man who tries to keep things together in his little kingdom (an abandoned farm house) instantly knowing that even the most negligible dropped clanger will attract terrifying toothsome, long-armed creatures with avocado -shaped skulls which are entirely composed by inner-ear architecture and teeth morphing their heads to hear even the slightest of sounds. Are they aliens? Are they vampires? Or possibly alien vampires (if you want to go creepy)? If indeed the characters had abstract conversations, maybe they'd wonder what they're being hunted by but instead they can only express the barest essential dialogue in order to survive as long as possible. While he pays off as the caring rather rugged survivalist keeping a slight fire ready for a beacon signifying survival, meanwhile his pregnant wife (Emily Blunt) is a rather obvious symbolism of hope for the future she also tries her hardest to keep the rest of her family in check. There's a slight everyday quality to this family that happily allows for you to invest more so in their journey for survival. Though their vulnerability is heightened just that little bit more and also enriched at the fact that there's a child on the way (a newborn that doesn't quite understand the importance of staying quiet) and what they must do in the situation when Blunt is just about to have it.
Happily even during those moments Krasinski still keeps A Quiet Place original for example what do you do if you don't hear the monsters coming? Well, there's an answer for that here as the eldest daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) is deaf so she can't hear the monsters coming and for that it's intensity is heightened. It's a film that just refuses to let up, and why should it? In short, Krasinski is already a well-known comedian and who knows it may even end up being like Get Out.

VERDICT Originally nightmarish and a genuinely tense horror which just doesn't let up and by removing the sound it genuinely makes things that bump in the night so much louder. Horror at its best.