A Smart Horror Movie, ‘A Quiet Place’ Will Make You Think About Silence

I usually complain furiously about the movies I get dragged to with my friends. For the most part, the overlap in our Venn Diagram of cinematic tastes consists of Marvel movies and Pacific Rim. I’m not saying my friends have bad taste in movies. I don’t believe in “bad taste” (people just like what they like) but paying money to watch Man with the Iron Fists damn sure wasn’t my idea. But my friends get a pass this time because it was their spur of the moment idea to go see John Krasinski’s endlessly stressful sci-fi thriller, A Quiet Place. I want to say that this is one of those films that redefines the horror genre, but honestly, it reestablishes time honored tenets of what makes an effective horror offering. A good horror movie gently encourages you to care about the survival of the characters. 2016’s Don’t Breathe was about a blind badass giving young delinquents more than they bargained for after breaking into his house. The Saw movies are, more or less, about the “villain” putting sad sacks and ne’er-do-wells through their paces. Relationships Are Key A Quiet Place is every bit as invested in its principal characters and the survival of their relationships as it is in forcing them to run a delicate gamut of difficulties in between them and the very simple goal of making it to tomorrow. A tomorrow when they’ll, more than likely, have to do it all over again because this is the world they have to live in now.

Krasinski wastes no time letting us know what the score is. Th…