A QUIET Place is directed by John Krasinski, who most people will know as Jim from The Office, but do not let that fool you - there are no fourth wall breaking smirks to the camera here.
The film is the second instance in recent years where the director is primarily known as a comedic performer. Last year's Oscar nominated Get Out was directed by Jordan Peele, famous for the comedy sketch show Key and Peele. Such a unique and well made film coming from Jim from The Office was unexpected but something any good comic and horror director have in common is a sense of timing. Timing in A Quiet Place is everything - from its sharp, short run time, to its wonderfully paced scenes dripping with tension.
Set roughly five years in the future, on a rural farm, the Abbott family struggles to survive a plague of blind, violent, monsters that attack at any single sound, resulting in the family mainly communicating through sign language. They leave sand trails around their farm to walk on, eat leaves with their hands to avoid the sound of a metal fork on china. The father, Lee (Krasinski ), and his wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt ), are also planning how they will manage the impending birth of their fourth child.This is a very physical film. You feel every step and hear every exhale. This is truly film to see in a cinema and would be less enjoyable on a laptop or a flight. Krasinski and his real life wife Blunt are obviously convincing as married couple, but the real star here is young Millicent Simmonds, who is absolutely brilliant as the deaf eldest child who blames herself for a incident which occurs early on in the film.
A Quiet Place is more of a episode of The Twilight Zone than Black Mirror, the monsters are straight out of the HR Giger design book and are disgustingly real. This film is the antithesis of the current modern blockbuster, this is sensory 'under-load' and I love it.
