John Krasinski Crafts A Dread-Inducing Horror Thriller With ‘A Quiet Place’ [SXSW Review]

Actor/filmmaker John Krasinski has kept audiences guessing and made quite the transformation over the years. Starting out as the nebbish, mild-mannered Jim Halpert on “The Office,”over the years, Krasinski has evolved into a screenwriter (“The Promised Land,” co-written with Matt Damon), a writer/director of comedy and drama (“Brief Interviews With Hideous Men,” “The Hollars“) and even beefed up as a tough guy action star (Michael Bay‘s “13 Hours,” and his upcoming turn as the star of “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” for Amazon Prime). Perhaps naturally then, for his latest directorial effort, Krasinski switches gears yet again to craft the horror-ish post-apocalyptic thriller, “A Quiet Place.”

A thrilling, near-silent film that brilliantly toys with the audience’s nerves while deftly avoiding familiar cliches, Krasinski shows a surprisingly assured and suspenseful touch within the horror genre. For a director that has mostly dealt in smaller scale humanism, “A Quiet Place” is impressively cinematic and a brilliantly constructed blend of sight and sound.

Set in an aforementioned post-apocalyptic world, Krasinski also stars alongside his wife Emily Blunt and their two children (Cade Woodward, Millicent Simmonds) forced to live in a world of near-silence so as to not awaken the mysterious monsters roaming around the woods. Using sign language 24/7 as a means to silently communicate, the technique has served them well and allowed the family to survive longer than their dearly departed neighbors.

“A Quiet Place” opens on day 89 of an unknown invasion. Mysterious creatures have wiped out parts of civilization and cockroach-looking mutants hide to prey on any kind of sound they hear, but the director keeps the details scarce and unsettlingly vague.  A warning painted on a farmhouse reads, “They Kill By Sound!” and other details of this lethal apocalypse are learned drip by drip through newspaper clippings stamped in and around the house. The parent’s children, a deaf teenage daughter (the well-cast Millicent Simmonds of “Wonderstruck” fame) and a horrified younger boy (Noah Jupe), understandably can’t seem to cope with the dangers that come in living on a farm in the open.

To add to the palpable sense of fear, Blunt’s character is pregnant, due any minute. Yet, even normalcy is found in such a bleak place; the orderly shape of their farm and crops indicates that life does goes on for them despite the looming daily threats.

M. Night Shyamalan‘s 2002 spookfest “Signs,” and even his underrated 2004 film “The Village,” both of which had families living in post-apocalyptic worlds filled with abnormally quiet horrors lurking at every corner, are key influences. Filled with dread, the way “A Quiet Place” utilizes sound is impressive. Every step, every creak, even any barefoot walk to a pharmacy might potentially be met with deadly consequences.

The minute detail of the mechanics of suspense are admirably Hitchcock-ian; Krasinski finds ways to make every mute, subtitled interaction count. For a studio-financed endeavor, “A Quiet Place” feels nearly experimental in the way it zeroes in on its characters’ hands and mouths to convey ordinary dialogue in a more conventional matter. It’s practically a silent film, and thus, the focus placed on visual storytelling. Normally tired jump scares are top-notch, in “A Quiet Place,” making you clench your teeth at every ensuing shot. Suffice to say, the 38-year-old filmmaker has a knack for building an atmosphere that sneaks up on you and doesn’t let go. Written by Krasinski and partners Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, the film effortlessly flips between art-house and genre qualities and even has the time to add in a few humorous passages that lighten the mood, albeit only for a few seconds.

Despite its artfully conceived and original set up, “A Quiet Place” admittedly turns into a more conventional scarefest, not unlike “Aliens” or “Predator.” Even with the risk-taking at the center of this film, there is nevertheless a pointedly mainstream-iness to the whole affair. That being said, it does maintain an exciting sense of tension in these very moments, despite the familiarity that creeps into the picture.

Still, the overall craft is well-honed and credit the writer/directing for pushing the PG-13 rating to the brink of its limits; “A Quiet Place” feels much more R-Rated. Kudos must go to Blunt and Krasinski whose performances have to rely on facial expressions and subtle gestures like twitchy hands, hunched postures or even simple shots of emotionally-drained baggy eyes. Krasinski struggled to find his directorial voice in the past, but his facility here indicates a stark clarity and talent for the horror genre. A nail-biting perfectly staged scene involving a grain elevator (one you won’t soon forget) is alone enough goodwill capital earned for another excursion into genre if he so chooses. As his surprising journey as an artist continues, it’ll be interesting to see where the filmmaker takes his directorial vision next as “A Quiet Place” marks a solid step in the right direction. [B]

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