A Quiet Place is John Krasinski's (AKA Jim from The Office) first film in the director's chair and he's delivered the kind of raw genre thrills that keeps your stomach in knots and your fingernails shredding the armrests.
Stripped down to its barest elements and just barely scraping by the
90-minute mark, it's devilish in its simplicity. Set in a very recently post-apocalyptic American town, a family eke out a meagre existence in near-complete silence in order to avoid being tracked by blind, razor-toothed monsters that can track even the smallest of sounds.
That means that, yes, A Quiet Place is on the surface a "quiet" film, but within that silence is tightly coiled tension. The ruthlessly effective sound design proceeds with great focus paid to every tiny change in the soundscape, and features only two or three scenes of dialogue throughout, the family mainly communicate using sign language,.
Krasinski, who also appears in the film as the put-upon father of the family, displays great promise as a director, though the material occasionally cries out for a more experienced, subtle hand than what is provided here.
His real-life spouse Emily Blunt appears here as the matriarch of the family, and their real-life chemistry is used to great effect to capture two struggling parents trying to protect their children from unspeakable horror.
