A Quiet Place: Probably the best horror film concept in recent memory.

A Quiet Place is the latest entry in a string of contemporary high-concept postmodern horrors, very much of a piece with films like It Follows, Don’t Breathe or Lights Out.

What's common in these movies are the logic of the movie drives it throughout the run time.The viewers are not clearly notified but are hinted during the course of the movie towards the logic of the movie.t Follows is obsessed with the rules that govern its unstoppable supernatural force, with the teen protagonists seeking to exploit and manipulate them. Lights Out focuses on a creature that can only really move when it is unseen, weaponizing the audience’s impulse to look away or cover their eyes when presented with horrific images within the film.

A Quiet Place builds on the same horror movie anxiety as Don’t Breath – the audience’s urge to gasp or to scream in response to the events on the screen. A Quiet Place unfolds in a world dominated by monsters that hunt based on sound, creating an environment where the human cast members have to remain as quiet as possible in order to survive. No matter what happens, the characters cannot scream. Given that they are starring in a horror movie, that is quite the challenge.

The structure of A Quiet Place is almost elegant in its design. The concept driving the film ensures that exposition is kept to a minimum. There is no room for extraneous dialogue. In order to preserve the silence, characters communicate with subtitled sign language. However, the mechanics of sign language coupled with the demands of a horror film mean that such interactions are functional and efficient. There are no monologues in A Quiet Place, and a minimum amount of exposition.

Performance:

In keeping with the idea that A Quiet Place is effectively a silent film, Krasinski and his cast pitch their performances in that vein. Both John Krasinski and Emily Blunt allow their performances to be expressive and a little exaggerated, communicating without recourse to language. Krasinski is particularly suited to this sort of storytelling as an actor. His eyes are expressive, his body language controlled, his face communicative even buried beneath a bushy beard. Krasinski sells his character’s emotions with saucer eyes and arched eye brows, so tightly wound he might explode.

Direction:

The comic turned director krasinski clearly has a deep appreciation of the genre, and relishes the opportunity to construct what is in effect a silent horror film. In particular, Krasinski is very good at using depth of focus to unsettle the audience, allowing threats and menaces to hide in the blurred spaces behind the characters or in the background. Krasinski cannily keeps his monsters obscured for most of the film, allowing the characters to linger on the destruction wrought by their aggressors’ passage.

My Reaction:

There is something very clean and very efficient here, a narrative constructed with a minimum of fuss. Indeed, A Quiet Place is so dedicated to the idea of being an effectively constructed horror film that it occasionally seems like there is no room for any of the social commentary or subtext that audiences have come to expect from truly great horror films, the subtext lurking just beneath the surface and suggesting a more primal sort of terror.

3 out of 5 stars to this brilliantly made horror film that not just promises but keeps you at the edge of you seats throughout the runtime.

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