A QUIET PLACE : Tuesday 10th April 2018.

'A QUIET PLACE' which I saw this week, is an American modern horror film Co-Written, Directed and starring John Krasinski that has already received much critical acclaim since its Premier at the annual South by Southwest Festival held in Austin, Texas on 9th March, before its US, UK and Australian release last week. Krasinski, perhaps best known for his role as Jim Halpert on the NBC hit sitcom 'The Office' is no stranger to the world of film and television acting having amassed so far 46 acting credits, as well as eleven Producer credits and four as Director and four as Screenwriter picking up six award wins and another 24 nominations along the way. Here he stars with his real life wife Emily Blunt, in this film that cost US$17M to make and has so far grossed US$89M.

The premise of the film is quite simple. A family of four living in a post-apocalyptic upstate New York community scavenge for essential supplies in a deserted town. It is 2020, and the opening credits tell us it is about the tenth week since the apocalypse hit and the worlds population was nearly wiped out - but by what exactly we don't yet know, except for a newspaper headline blowing in the wind on a newsstand proclaiming 'It's sound!'

Mum Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt), Dad Lee Abbott (John Krasinski), deaf teenage daughter Regan (the actually deaf Millicent Simmonds) who communicates with her family via American Sign Language, son Marcus (Noah Jupe) and their youngest lad Beau (Cade Woodward) snoop around the empty ransacked remains of a general store seeking supplies, all the while remaining deathly quiet, not whispering a sound and walking around on barefoot. Young Beau takes a fancy to a model of the Space Shuttle, but father Lee takes it from him motioning that its sounds will be too loud. Lee removes the toys batteries and leaves them and the Space Shuttle model on the counter top, and they leave to go home while it's still daylight.

Regan returns the toy to Beau who secrets it away under his coat and brings up the rear of the family unit, but before doing so, grabs the batteries too. On the walk home, crossing a bridge, young Beau inserts the batteries and turns on the toy. It springs to life with flashing lights and sounds that instantly attracts an alien creature approaching at lightning speed. In an instant Beau is gone, dead, while the other four family members look on in horror.

We next fast forward to day 472, and the family of four has settled into a routine of silence on their  farmstead. By now we have learned that the Abbott's must fight for their survival without making a sound for fear of being attacked, killed and possibly eaten by lightning fast blind spidery like extra terrestrial creatures with an acute sense of hearing. Being blind, the only way these creatures can survive, is to locate their prey by sound. The family has learned to communicate by necessity with their deaf daughter Regan by way of American Sign Language which possibly accounts for their survival when their friends and neighbours have all perished. Evelyn is also heavily pregnant and expecting the birth of their next child within a matter of weeks.

Lee takes his son, Marcus on a fishing trip. His son is very reluctant to go for fear of the creatures, and Regan pleads to go instead, But it is Marcus' turn to go, and go he must, leaving Regan to stay at home and look after her expectant Mum, while Marcus learns the skills of survival to help safeguard his future. Feeling rejected, Regan goes off in a huff to visit Beau's memorial cross where he fell prey to the creature at the entry to the bridge the year before. She remains there until nightfall. Meanwhile father Lee explains to his son, that the sounds of the rushing river will drown out any sounds that the pair make, and therefore they are safe from attack. Having caught their fish, they walk back through the woods and come to an abandoned house.

In the grounds they confront an old man standing over his limp lifeless and recently torn body of his wife. The old man is emotional, and Lee motions to him to control himself and remain silent, but he cannot and he screams out loud so attracting a creature which charges and kills him. Lee picks up his son and runs for cover behind a tree. Marcus is visibly upset by the scene and the sounds of the attack and is restrained by his father. When the coast is clear, they continue with their journey home.

In the meantime, Evelyn is home alone not noticing Regan's absence. She goes about her business hanging out the washing, and visiting their former home on the farm, for they now live in a converted barn a short distance away that is more suitable for their needs. Inside the house she sits in the bedroom of her youngest son, weeps and dozes off. Coming round, it is approaching the early evening. Walking down the stairs, her waters break with the onset of labour. Walking down the stairs to the basement, which is Lee's surrogate control and communications centre, she steps barefoot on a protruding nail, that she snagged inadvertently earlier in the day. She screams out in pain, drops a glass picture frame and attempts to conceal her screams, but to no avail. One of the creatures has heard the commotion, and comes charging toward the house.

Evelyn switches the external lights from white to red to alert Lee and Marcus of danger at the farm, all the while struggling to control her contractions and the agony of her foot injury. Arriving at the farm house and seeing the red lights Lee instructs a visibly frightened Marcus to go and create a diversion using already primed fireworks, while Lee runs off to locate his wife.

Evelyn has taken refuge in a bath tub upstairs desperately trying to conceal her cries of alarm and from the pain of her increasingly frequent contractions. A creature makes its way upstairs sensing she is close by, only to then be diverted by the sound of the explosive fireworks outside. Lee finds Evelyn cowering in the shower cubicle swaddling their newborn son. He carries mother and baby to the soundproof basement that he constructed specifically for the baby, lays the baby to sleep in a soundproof box, and tends to his wife's wounds and settled her down to sleep.

Regan returns to the farm having also been alerted by the fireworks in the distance. She locates Marcus and they both take refuge on top of a grain silo, lighting a fire to draw their father's attention, but it quickly goes out. Regan grows inpatient and refuses to wait around for her Dad, while Marcus pleads with her to stay. Pacing around the roof top of the silo, a hatch door gives way causing Marcus to fall in, and he quickly begins to sink beneath the grain deposits. Regan jumps in to rescue her young brother and they both cling to the fallen hatch door to avoid being pulled under the grain again. The noise from this has drawn a creature to the silo which bursts its way in through the side wall and attacks them. By now the children are cowering under the upturned hatch door to afford themselves some protection. Earlier in the day Lee had given Regan a repaired cochlear implant with the hope of restoring her hearing to some degree, which had failed to work as planned (again!). In proximity to the creature, Regan's makeshift repaired implant emits a very high frequency and ear piercing sound that quickly wards off the creature, so allowing the children time to escape the silo and reunite with their father.

The creature returns and Lee stands his ground, so allowing the children to take refuge in a pick up truck. He attacks the creature with an axe, but is tossed away like a rag doll. The creature diverts its attention to the pick up truck and its human contents. Lee rises to his feet, signals his message of love for his daughter and son in sign language and then yells out loud so drawing the creature away from the children and sacrificing himself in the process. The children make it back to the farmhouse and their mother.

The creature returns to the farmhouse in search for its prey. Reagan is down in the basement with the rest of the family, amidst her fathers security monitors, radio broadcast equipment, her fathers notes, newspaper clippings and his equipment for repairing her cochlear implants. The creature makes its way down the stairs to where the family is hiding in absolute silence. It dawns on Regan from her previous experience in the silo, that the power of the boosted feedback from her implant fed through a microphone would ward off the creature. She ramps up the amp, turns up the microphone and places her implant to the mic sending the creature into a painful frenzy from which it collapses in a heap on the floor before them. The creature however, rises again, and so Regan repeats the process so further disorienting the creature long enough for Evelyn to blast it with a shotgun to the head, killing it dead. The images on the security monitors show two other creatures approaching at speed towards the farmhouse, but this time Evelyn and Regan know what to do!

The Sound Production guys must have had a field day coming up with creative ways to convey silence on this film, and they have succeeded on just about every level in a film almost entirely devoid of dialogue, save for about a dozen lines of conversation. This film is easily up there with the recent 'Get Out' and 'Don't Breathe' and here Krasinski has proved himself a master of Direction, Screenwriting and Acting in this tense, taught, tightly woven suspenseful frightener that delivers an original story matched with strong, grounded and believable performances, pitched against  a convincing creature feature that would easily match the 'Alien' in any bar brawl. This is a must see film for many reasons and you won't be disappointed - its a simple story of local survival amidst an global wipeout, told convincingly and intelligently, with characters you can relate to, enough scares to keep you on the edge of your seat, and to prompt further thought after the credits have rolled.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-