Naked feet tiptoeing on a path covered in the sand through deserted supermarkets and forests.  ‘A quiet place’ is literal in all sense and builds on the relationship between sound and survival.

The setup is eerie.  A family of five left in a world absent of other human survivors. The pretext might seem like old story new package, but what follows is aberrant.

The plot is simple and concise, blind creatures hunt you down through sound, silence means survival. In the first five minutes, you know that the stakes are high. There isn’t much heed paid to history or background of these creatures or how has the world come to this. But the marvel lies in the details. A narrative brilliance is demonstrated through expressions, newspaper cut-outs, whispered exchanges and silence. All of it keeps you glued and sufficiently informed. The ingredients are cleverly spaced throughout the movie to establish this ‘living’ around measured sound.  A family that has meticulously built a space and a way to not just survive but also find plausible joy in this daily challenge.

Far away from the usual horror movie clichés, this one hour, thirty minutes of screen time throbs of menace in the absence of sound. The background score is hint enough to the building tension and the lack of it, which is rare.

The heroes of the setup are the actors (Emily Blunt, John Krasinski and the child actors) and the music. Despite the unusualness it brings to the genre, the grip is a high notch.  There is an awful lot in very less to experience in  ‘A quiet place’ and I would recommend watching it for its brevity.