Generic Monster Schlock

Rating: 5/10 (3 May 2018)

In the year 2020 the last remnants of the human race (in this case, an attractive nuclear family who say grace before supper) fight for their lives against blind, violent, indestructible creatures that sniff out their victims via sound. In short, keep your gob shut or you'll wind up monster munch.
It's a decent concept with a promising prologue that occasionally delivers some deafeningly silent moments of tension. But a strong concept does not a good movie make - especially if it doesn't have a robust story with compelling characters to drive it along - and inside the first 20 minutes AQP proves its pedigree as high-concept minus the courage of its convictions.
Co-writer, director and leading man John Krasinski (playing the kind of post apocalyptic Dad who, when not figuring out how to thwart generic looking monsters from nowhere in particular, somehow manages to find the time to maintain his hair and beard in the style of a G*p model) blows the central conceit by way of placing a sappy, cliched music score in all the places crying out for solitary creepy sound design. A spectacular own goal if ever there was one!
What else did I hate? - let me see...oh yeah: the syrupy sentimental family drama, the soul-crushing jump-scares, the jaw-dropping plot holes you could fly a Death Star through, toe-curling Shakespeare quotes hanging unironically on living room walls, a criminally wasted Emily Blunt as pregnant Mom (exactly what you plan for when surrounded by cannibalistic monsters sensitive to noise: a screaming baby!) and a script of pitifully meagre substance and content that's wholly derivative of M Night Charlatan's woeful 2002 misfire, 'Signs'.
AQP will, more likely than not, be loved by those whose broadsheet told them it's a 'rare' horror worth shelling out for. Anyone else who wants to see this kind of thing done correctly should watch 'Metalheads' from the last season of Black Mirror instead, and not waste their money on a movie that'll be forgotten a couple of hours after watching it. Hugely disappointing.