Recensioni de* critic*

Because it’s so very stupid, it’s tempting not to take A Quiet Place seriously at all. (Gotta love that basement whiteboard laying out the details for all of us unable to follow basic exposition: CREATURE... BLIND... ATTACK SOUND... SURVIVE... WHAT IS THE WEAKNESS?) Yet more disturbing than its silly spiders and predictable suspense set pieces was its sly survivalist conservatism.

Krasinski, who also directed, now exists at the midpoint between Ben Affleck and Mel Gibson. A Quiet Place has a Shyamalanian quality but is less personal and clunky, more generic and crowd-pleasing. . . . A Quiet Place may be reactionary, but it only wants to be entertainment, the same way Affleck and Gibson movies do.

This breathless opening reveals Krasinski’s sophisticated filmmaking approach, setting up the premise and showcasing the meticulous attention to detail that will turn his lean story into a masterclass of tension. While it is mostly devoid of dialogue, it is a film rich in subtle textural detail.

Krasinski’s regressive inclinations in such an ostensibly forward-thinking film are puzzling when held against the works of the genre’s masters, including Krasinski’s contemporaries. . . . Though it bears the markings of a gut-wrenching horror film, A Quiet Place is stubbornly optimistic about the existing order.

Krasinski (who wrote the script with Bryan Woods and Scott Beck) chose to keep his characters blank and undefined, their memories and musings out of bounds. What dialogue there is (whether spoken or signed) is confined to the demands of the action (with one twist of psychology involving an element of guilt that figures only trivially in the plot).

Krasinski has made one of the most poetic horror movies of recent years. Its sound design alone is glorious, locating the infinite gradations in that thing we so casually call silence. A Quiet Place, its shivery terrors aside, captures the imperfect textures of family life.

There are high-minded ways to interpret A Quiet Place, which develops into an affecting metaphor for the perils of parenthood, but it's effective primarily as a back-to-basics statement of genre fundamentals. We're so accustomed to being pummeled into submission by studio soundtracks that the deprivation here has a clarifying effect, reminding us of what's possible when sound and music is carefully placed.

Is the movie in on the joke? A Quiet Place is an engaging picture about how to live peacefully among monsters, making its release uncannily well timed to the Roseanne reboot, among other things. But half the thrill of watching it is admittedly in wondering whether Krasinski and his cowriters, Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, were trying to spare the SNL writers’ room the work of coming up with a parody.

Mr. Krasinski (who helped write the screenplay) directs with skill and restraint. He knows that when the sound is turned down, we lean in, and he forces us to pay attention to facial expressions in a way that hearing audiences are rarely required to do.