The horror film starring actor-director John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, is so current, uncomplicated and all encompassing with its narrative templates that it’s impossible not to laud its slick form of genre activism

And, with its themes of family and fidelity, it’s so much more than just a chills and thrills flick. It’s about the very real fear parents have about bringing up kids in a world overrun, if not with alien monsters, with horrors beyond counting and somehow teaching them the skills, and sense of hope, they need to survive and prosper.

John Krasinski employs very few tricks in this simple story, except perhaps using children too often to turn up the horror.

John Krasinski’s ingenious horror film is destined for greatness. It’s also one of the best scary movies of the last decade. You will be haunted for days.

The film intensely relies on the senses for full immersion and it keeps the viewers petrified with it’s great visual style.

A word of advice – choose your viewing partner carefully as ‘A Quiet Place’ can only be appreciated in silence with the least amount of conversation during its runtime. Better still – watch this alone (and switch off your phones), then loudly proceed to rave about this essential horror film to everyone else!

Despite it’s few aberrations, ‘A Quiet Place’ is a stand-out horror feature because it abstains from the typical jump-scares and hackneyed tropes that abound in genre fare.

A Quiet Place, directed by John Krasinski, is almost like a master class in the art of pacing a horror thriller. It is consistently eerie, ominous and offers a series of very tense situations that are anchored by characters we are deeply invested in. In many ways, this is a perfect movie to watch on the big screen and you should be heading to the theater instead of wasting your time reading this review.

Overall, the film, artistically mounted with horror tropes, despite its fascinating concept which feels fiercely original, risky and undeniably frightening, feels like a contrived film, especially towards the end.

At the centre of a film as disturbing as this is a tender portrayal of family, parenthood, loss and companionship, proving that there is, in fact, ample space and scope for meaningful horror, like last year’s Get Out. But with an apocalyptic premise, there are bound to be several loopholes, which stand out rather starkly.

Neither intellectually deep nor even logically sound (press any soft spot and the whole plot caves in), A Quiet Place feels at odds with a musical score that too often wants to tell us when to jump, and how high. Yet in its convincing portrayal of a situation where a rusty nail is as lethal as an unexploded bomb, and the few remaining inhabitants seem — much like the audience — more likely to die of stress than anything else, the movie rocks. You may go in jaded, but you’ll leave elated or I’ll eat my words.

Most of the film is silent, and the sound design accentuates every creak, whimper and breath. However, the melodramatic touches in the scenes depicting the relationship between the parents and the children prove to be jarring in an otherwise restrained and minimal narrative. Whenever an attempt is made to gaze deeper and uncover family secrets, the gaps in logic quickly become apparent.