Silence is the greatest asset of “A Quiet Place,” the new horror film directed by John Krasinski. You may know him as Jim from “The Office,” but there’s nothing funny happening here.
The premise is simple: a family must remain silent to avoid sightless monsters who prowl the Earth and hunt by following noise. Sound leads to death, and “A Quiet Place” wastes no time making this clear.
The beginning of a genre movie is crucial as it sets tone, expectations and consequences. Krasinski and his crew do all of this masterfully in the prologue for “A Quiet Place.”
An eerie silence replaces verbal exposition. The characters largely communicate via sign language, and anything the audience needs to know is expressed visually. How these monsters arrived and so brutally destroyed society is never explained in great detail and it doesn’t need to be. It’s the danger they pose which needs to be known, and establishing this early draws the viewer into caring about the survival of this family.
The story begins during the 89th day following the creatures’ arrival. Lee and Evelyn Abbott, portrayed by Krasinski and Emily Blunt, lead their children on a supply hunt through an empty town. Everything that follows is the family’s attempt to survive in this new world while raising their children with lessons from life before and after this danger. Naturally, the monsters make that difficult.
An admirable restraint is shown when it comes to displaying the monsters and the damage they cause. A common fault of horror movies is that directors show too much carnage, so much so that eventually rivers of blood and piles of intestines are just images. This isn’t the case in “A Quiet Place,” where the bloody aftermath is seldom seen and a full view of the monsters is avoided until the moment it has the most impact on viewers.
In the real world, the unusual sight of blood is frequently enough of a reason to panic and what little gore is present feels like a big deal because its abnormality is preserved.
The same generally applies to the villains in this type of movie. Scaly grey skin and a lean, tall body with sharp edges is a familiar look. However, they’re rarely the camera’s focus as the tension and danger they bring to the screen tend to overshadow their rather derivative appearance.
Similarly, the music sounds familiar if you’ve seen a decent number of horror movies. It’s a serviceable soundtrack because it complements the tone of the movie, but I genuinely struggle to recall anything unique about it. The moments scored by silence are more harrowing because they force you to listen closely for any sign of trouble.
The motivations for the film’s handful of characters don’t really consist of anything beyond survival and only glimpses of their lives before this apocalypse are seen. Krasinski’s Lee is seen with a backpack which hints at previous military service, as well as a workshop that implies engineering experience. Blunt’s Evelyn appears to have been a teacher. None of this is confirmed, but details like these imply things which make the film more interesting to think about while shaping our perceptions of these characters.
Yet even with these possibilities, “A Quiet Place” is a rather straightforward thriller. The pacing resembles that of a roller coaster. Tension is present throughout because of the audience’s expectations. For a few moments, you’re relaxed and everything feels fine until the action begins. Small victories for the protagonists are frequently followed by a new threat until (and if) a solution is found.
“A Quiet Place” robbing itself of the ability to rely on dialogue is its greatest strength, and it makes what little words are spoken matter more. Where many other filmmakers would use dialogue as a crutch to communicate ideas, Krasinski does such an effective job without it that you literally began to root against noises because you know what it means. That is the mark of an effective horror film.