The scary sound of silence

Rating: 8/10 (25 April 2018)

A QUIET PLACE comes with echoes of WAR OF THE WORLDS and CGI aliens that look like hideous clones of Sigourney Weaver's intergalactic chums. After an invasion by people-chomping monsters a family of survivors try to find sanctuary in rural America: Emily Blunt and her real-life husband John Krasinski (who also directs) and their three kids. The aliens are blind but super-sensitive to sound, so the family learns to live as silently as possible, talking in sign-language and whispers. The perils of noise are brought vividly home from time to time: a battery-operated toy or a dropped plate brings terrible retribution. Emily is pregnant, so you wonder how she is going to give birth in silence and produce a noiseless infant. These questions are answered in nerve-shredding scenes in the second half of the film.
Normally, when someone's phone goes off in a cinema, you make noises of disapproval and long to belt them. When this happened yesterday I almost hit the deck!
A QUIET PLACE has the rustic unease of several of M. Night Shyamalan's movies. You think the countryside is safer than the city? Think again.