Expect to be mesmerised: Rashid Irani reviews A Quiet Place

So if you haven’t seen John Krasinski’s taut and increasingly compelling horror film then please do just that before returning to read the below.

For sheer cinematic ingenuity, A Quiet Place merits comparison with Alfred Hitchcock, who would probably have enjoyed this deeply disturbing film. Even though the Abbot family’s world is soundless to our ears, when we are given Rachel’s perspective, that’s when we realize what it’s like to have completely no sound at all.

John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place will hit theaters this weekend on April 6. We realize how hard it is for deaf-mute people to express frustration. Somehow, a low-budget horror film written by two unknown screenwriters, starring and directed by a guy known for his work on sitcoms, managed to be not just good but great, a possible contender for one of the best films of 2018. The focus is purely on the family and their adaptations to this world.

They way the characters relate to each other is beautifully depicted, particularly when it comes to what Krasinski’s character is dedicated. The actor married her sister Felicity Blunt after meeting her on the set of The Devil Wears Prada (which Blunt said she was very much open to a sequel for). A Quiet Place will have you encapsulated with the story, and cowering in fear, afraid to breath, and especially, even speak. For many viewers, this will be their first actual encounter with sign language beyond the occasional interpreter at an event, and it matters that it’s one brought to them by an actual user of the language, someone is already using the platform the film gave her to urge more people to learn it. In John Krasinski’s clammy-palmed survival horror A Quiet Place, screaming is a lot worse than fruitless – it would instantly be the end of you. If you suffer from high blood pressure, check it before arrival. In an age of notoriously obnoxious, chatty moviegoers, Krasinski has made a movie that strongly encourages (if not altogether requires) audiences to shut the hell up.

Knowing sign language has helped keep them alive longer than most, though everyone’s been tense since tragedy struck a few months into their scary new normal. The score, much of it just heartbeats, leaves you questioning whether this is pounding sound effects added to induce terror or a literal manifestation of these characters’ beating hearts, the only sounds they can’t obscure. It will thrill Friday night crowds, but it courts a more sensitive audience with its emotional through-line, which if anything approaches being too sentimental at times. You married Emily Blunt? Go. The two have an easy camaraderie, anticipating the other’s moves in a way that’s natural.

My favorite moment, an encounter between Regan and one of the monsters in a cornfield, plays with sound and image and tension, creatively. Of course, Blunt has played a mother before, but a big difference between a film like Looper and A Quiet Place is that she became a real mother herself in 2014 (and then again in 2016), so she now has a well of authenticity to draw from in her performance. “We just sat in the forest and we listened, and it was really powerful to have all of these ambient sounds around you“, he said. In Blockers, each parent has their own epiphany, no more so than Cena’s Mitchell, who admits to Geraldine Viswanathan’s Kayla that he has no idea why his daughter engaging in consensual sexual activity causes him such angst. How can they protect their kids if they can’t protect themselves? She was the highlight of Wonderstruck, and her expressive face and impressive acting chops make her integral to this movie’s core conflict: keeping their family together and preparing for a future when gory death is constantly one sound away. “And I like playing people who are very dissimilar to myself this, but this was close to home”.