A Quiet Place - review by Alison Rowat

With: John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds

Runtime: 90 minutes

HOW to convey what a nerve-shredding, heart-pounding, exhilarating ride lies ahead should you dare to see John Krasinski’s ridiculously entertaining horror, A Quiet Place?

I could tell you of the tea I spilled on myself courtesy of a barrage of explosive moments, but who cares about poor film critics and the dangers we face (don’t get me started on velour burn).

Or perhaps we should call on Mr Spielberg for an indicator. The British Board of Film Classification provides a “BBFC insight” about a film’s content. According to this, Spielberg’s Jaws, the 1975 classic against which most other thrillers are judged, poses “moderate threat”. A Quiet Place has “sustained threat”. In short, if you are of a particularly nervous disposition stay out of this patch of water.

Everyone else, particularly anyone who would usually no more go to a horror movie than they would stick a fork in their eye, should give it a try. A terrific movie is just that, regardless of genre, and Krasinski, an actor best known so far for the American TV version of the office, has turned in a doozy for his third film as a director after The Hollars and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

He opens A Quiet Place in a supermarket in a post-apocalyptic America. A little family (Krasinski and Emily Blunt as parents Evelyn and Lee) is grubbing around in search of anything useful. Though the place is abandoned, they are being deathly quiet, moving around without shoes and using sign language. What has happened?

Following a meteorite strike, a race of creatures who hunt by sound have taken over Earth. As the old newspapers blowing around warn, those who want to stay alive must stay silent. How do you live without making a peep? How does it feel as a parent to know that death could be seconds away for you or your children? “Who are we,” asks Evelyn of her husband, “if we can’t protect them?”

These are some of the questions Krasinski poses over the course of 90 minutes. There is nothing particularly original about the tricks he pulls to get audiences sweating in their seats. A few, indeed, will be familiar (did any good ever come from living beside corn fields?). Here lie darkened cellars, things that go bump and scratch in the night, and helter skelter chases.

But in playing so cleverly on our primal fears, reducing humans to the sum of animal instincts, A Quiet Place is a riot. The sheer relentlessness of the pace, the way Krasinski keeps the tension razor-wire tight, is astonishing, as are the performances by Blunt and Millicent Simmonds, playing one of the couple’s children. As in any good horror, it is the quiet moments that terrify the most and will stay with you longest.

Still on the subject of horror films for people who do not normally like horror is the all-British Ghost Stories (15) ***. Written and directed by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman (who also stars), this is a lo-fi Tales of the Unexpected-style voyage into the unknown that wears its slight naffness as a badge of pride.

Nyman plays Professor Goodman, a man who has earned many enemies in his role as a debunker of the supernatural.

The ghost slayer is contacted by one of his old heroes, a fellow sceptic, who recants and tells Goodman that if he takes on three unsolved cases he will become a believer too.

In best fairy tale tradition, confident Goodman goes off on the trail of the spooked night watchman (played by Paul Whitehouse), the nervy teen (Alex Lowther), and a rich but rattled City slicker (Martin Freeman). Again, the frights will be familiar to those familiar with the genre, but the twists and tone are all Dyson and Nyman. The latter is particularly good as the academic who is not as brave or as shock-proof as he thinks, while Freeman ditches his Dr Watson stumbling to play a slick, Holmesian character. Paul Whitehouse’s performance as the security guard riddled with insecurities is a reminder of what outstanding actors comedians can make.

Although just eight minutes longer than A Quiet Place, Ghost Stories suffers a few lulls and dips in quality, but acquits itself in time courtesy of sly humour and the sheer energy with which it keeps the audience on edge.