A Quiet Place Is 'Masterful'

Make a noise, get hunted. That's the premise of A Quiet Place, set in a world ravaged by sound-sensitive aliens. Directed by John Krasinski (yes, Jim from The Office), the film follows a family led by Krasinski and his real-life wife, Emily Blunt, and has an impressive 96% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Here's what they're saying:

• Dislike horror movies? See A Quiet Place anyway, Jocelyn Noveck writes at the AP. It's "ingeniously creepy" with "jump-out-of-your-seat moments." But it also offers "an inventive premise" and "a terrific cast." Blunt "can register fear, joy, love and anxiety in one scene without needing to utter a word," says Noveck. And, impressive for a horror film, A Quiet Place "only occasionally strains its own logic."
• "The quieter it gets, the more noise it makes," writes Adam Graham at Detroit News, describing A Quiet Place as a "masterful horror tale that will leave audiences gasping for air." Krasinski gets high praise: He "makes us think about our own relationship with sound" and "sets a gripping mood from the very beginning." It makes for "a bold experiment in fear with a triumphant payoff," Graham writes.

• "You'll leave elated or I'll eat my words," writes Jeannette Catsoulis of this "old-fashioned creature feature." Krasinski "forces us to pay attention to facial expressions in a way that hearing audiences are rarely required to do." And the actors deliver. Seeing deaf actor Millicent Simmonds "cycle through hurt, doubt, anger and acceptance is one of the movie’s singular pleasures," Catsoulis writes at the New York Times. "The movie rocks."
• "If A Quiet Place has one flaw, it's that it never lets up. There's little breathing space between its breathtaking moments," says Stephanie Zacharek. At Time, she calls the film "one of the most terrifyingly effective horror movies" and "one of the most poetic horror movies" in years. "Its sound design alone is glorious, locating the infinite gradations in that thing we so casually call silence."

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