A Quiet Place

It's great to see a film without knowing everything about it. It's hard to do that in this age of nonstop twitter spoilers and trailers that give away everything but on rare occasion it can happen. I saw A Quiet Place on Monday night at a preview showing and all I knew about it was it was a horror and it starred two actors, Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, who are always good.

It blew me away.

It's the near future. A family live a simple and very quiet life on a farm in rural America. They live in silence and communicate through whispers and sign language. The reason for this is the world around them is now teeming with creatures who prey on humans and who hunt and attack anything making a sound. They pass their time with no real idea of how their future will pan out until an upcoming change in circumstance starts creating some big issues.

I loved this. Loved it. Using sound in a highly effective way and combining that with some superb acting it takes a concept that could be silly and turns it into something brilliant. It's a brisk, efficient, tension packed horror film that is utterly terrifying in places and best of all, it's populated with characters who you'll come to care about and be petrified for over the course of the movie. For a horror film to truly work you need to give a shit about the people in it and here you'll roar for them, cry for them, feel nauseous about them and hope against hope for them. Real life couple John Krasinski and Emily Blunt play Lee and Evelyn Abbott and play off each other like a charm. They create a lovely and believable relationship through glances, concerned looks and the bare minimum of communication. Their kids are great too, Marcus (Noah Jupe) a wound up ball of relatable anxiety and Regan (Millicent Simmonds), their frustrated teenage daughter who wants to grow up and be responsible but who is being held back by a lack of communication with her father and the small issue of the post apocalyptic world they all find themselves in.

Yup, it's a post apocalyptic horror film. That old chestnut. We've all been here before but smartly this film narrows its focus to one family, drip feeding us only slivers of info on the wider world situation and it gives the story an intimacy and warmth that sustains us through the more nail biting moments in the film, because Jesus Christ there's a lot of them. From the opening moments there's a constant creeping dread that will worm its way into your guts. Then the scares come and they just keep on coming. Some are suffocating, some are so tense you'll have nail dents in your palms for hours after and some are good old fashioned jump scares that through their use of sound feel totally organic and not crow barred in like you usually see in modern horror.

The use of sound in this film is unique. We hear gentle gusts of wind through a corn field, the lapping of water in a river and the film's musical score but we rarely hear a word spoken. Speaking equals death which makes the few lines of dialogue we do hear feel precious. One scene of a couple connecting during a softly sung Neil Young song is just beautiful. Watching a film like this will make you realise how much dialogue in film is superfluous when you see the complex range emotions conveyed through the glances and furrowed brows of the Abbott family. The silences created by all this lull you into a false sense of security and then when the noises happen they are fantastically effective.

This film works fantastically well as both a horror film and a study of a family struggling to stay together but there's even more to it than that. It has interesting things to say about the roles men and women fall into when civilisation crumbles. Maternal roles and hunter gatherer roles, outward strength vs inner strength. What exactly parents are willing to risk for their kids and much more. It's pretty much a perfect little film. One silly moment involving a kitchen utensil annoyed me because it felt like a plot device inserted thoughtlessly into the film but there's just so much goodness packed into this that it's very easy to overlook any mistakes.

Lead actor John Krasinski also directed this and he's done a hell of a job. Who would have thought the man who played goofy, lovable Jim Halpert in The Office was capable of making a film like this. I cannot wait to see what he does next. He's created a stunning horror film with a heart that will pin you to your seat. I highly recommend going to see this if you can when it comes out on Friday.