Shhhh... they’re right behind you!
Emily Blunt shines in a horror flick that turns staying silent into an art form
John KRASINSKI, who directed, co-wrote and stars in the superb A Quiet place, might get more respect next time he arrives in England, where he is regarded — or recently was, by a customs official at the airport — as little more than Mr Emily Blunt.
his wife of eight years also stars in A Quiet place, and moreover is going to be the new Mary poppins, so, spitspot, maybe there’s no escaping her shadow. But there’s no doubt that Krasinski, with this film, announces himself as a serious creative talent.
A horror-thriller as taut and tense as a high wire, it runs for just 95 minutes, but plunges us into a terrifyingly believable world in which monstrous aliens, without sight but with extraordinarily sensitive hearing, have taken over the planet (or anyway the United states, which to American film- makers counts as the same thing).
in Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings books that i loved as a child, one of the teachers at linbury court school possessed something the boys called ‘supersonic ear- sight’. That’s what these monsters have. if they hear you, they will pounce from nowhere and devour you.
The film’s opening shot is of a traffic light, that emblem of order and control, lying on its side. soon, we are in an abandoned supermarket, where a bare-footed family of five is gathering — very, very quietly — some of the items it needs to survive.
We don’t get to know them by name, but they are the Abbotts: Evelyn (Blunt), lee (Krasinski) and their three children. The youngest covets a batteryoperated toy aircraft, which could spell trouble. one of the many small strokes of genius about A Quiet place is that, although the narrative provokes many questions, we’re too distracted to need answers.
Either that, or we can make up the answers ourselves. Boldly, Krasinski and his co-writers, Bryan Woods and scott Beck, withhold much of the information that a lesser film might divulge. This is ‘Day 89’ — but since what? An alien invasion, presumably.
And why do the Abbotts at first appear to be the only human survivors in this ravaged world? perhaps because their oldest child, Regan (Millicent simmonds, the marvellous, hearingimpaired actress who also appears in another of this week’s releases, Wonderstruck) is deaf. so they can all communicate in sign language.
There are only sporadic bursts of dialogue louder than a whisper, which of course cranks up the tension. But there’s a lovely moment next to a roaring waterfall, when lee persuades Regan’s younger brother Marcus (the excellent young British actor noah Jupe) that he can give a rare bellow, since the noise of the cascading water will stop his shout reaching alien ears.
Meanwhile, glimpses of alarming newspaper headlines — stay silent, stay Alive — imply that humanity, what little is left of it, is purely on the defensive. Why didn’t all those gun- owners in America fight back? Well,
because sound attracts more and more of the critters. But in any case, we are only concerned with the Abbotts, who by Day 472, having endured one family tragedy, must avert another.
They are holed up in a remote farmhouse where Evelyn is about to give birth to the couple’s fourth child, but, with no access to pain relief, how can she do so noiselessly?
Krasinski possibly didn’t anticipate one tongue-in- cheek way in which his film would be deployed; I went to the Odeon in Hereford last Sunday, where clips from it were shown before the main feature, to encourage the audience to put away their mobile phones and generally stay quiet.
But it could also be shown to anxious expectant mothers, on the basis that they won’t have anything like as much to contend with as poor Evelyn, who, with the monsters circling and listening, even goes and steps on a nail during her contractions.
That is one of several unforgettable scenes. Another rivals Peter Weir’s 1985 movie Witness for the most compelling turn of events ever in a corn silo. About halfway through that scene, I realised I was forgetting to breathe.
On one level, A Quiet Place might be about hostile aliens, but on another, more visceral level, it is about parental love and sacrifice.
‘What are we, if we can’t protect them?’ laments Evelyn. Indeed.
Although it feels irreverent, not to say dangerous, to offer everyone involved in this brilliant film a loud round of applause, that’s what they deserve.
■ IT IS unusual for the week’s best two releases to be horror films, but Ghost
Stories, adapted by Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson from their own stage play, is spine- chillingly terrific, too. Nyman plays Professor Goodman, the presenter of a British TV series called Psychic Cheats.
He is the ultimate sceptic, who spends his life scoffing at the notion of the paranormal, at least until another professional debunker resurfaces, a dour Scotsman who disappeared years earlier in mysterious circumstances.
He summons Goodman to his home on a godforsaken seaside caravan park and invites him to investigate three cases that will indeed prove the existence of malign spirits.
The first of the cases involves an embittered nightwatchman, splendidly played in a rare departure from comedy, by Paul Whitehouse. Later, Martin Freeman pops up as a wealthy landowner, haunted by his dead wife and child.
Rather topically, given the desperate current travails of the Labour Party, anti-Semitism, both overt and subtle, also rears its ugly head. So while there are plenty of standard horror-film tropes, Ghost Stories is also full of originality. It is an ingeniously crafted and properly scary film.