A Quiet Place (please!)

Blunt and Krasinski and daughters last week

I think it's more than likely that Krasinski, who rewrote the screenplay for this film he also directs and co-stars in, and which begins with a ten-minute segment of agonising silence through which my teeth were poised painfully over the crunchy nut-choc top of my rapidly melting ice cream, was drawn to the project due to the arrival the previous year of his (and wife Emily Blunt's) second child.

'What's this script? "A Quiet Place"? I'm in.

I could be wrong.

Apparently Emily took a different view of the situation, though. She had to be persuaded to do the film, perhaps thinking it was not possible or believable to make a film that requires young children to be almost totally quiet for any period longer than, say, four and a half seconds. Aliens, yes, silent young (not asleep) children, no.

Or it might just have been that she was feeling a little postpartum still, having delivered their second child less than a year before hubby pitched the project to her.

But although she is partly right about the challenging premise, the film that she and John co-star in is a triumph on many levels and already a box-office hit. Other people love silence too, it seems.

And horror.

And Blunt and Krasinski paired, no doubt.

It's a rare thing to see real-life husband and wife films, not least because Hollywood is not known for its success in breeding happily married couples. The couple who make films together stay together, is not a thing. Until now, I suspect. These two are showing us how it's done. Never mind aliens with massive pointy bullet teeth and surprisingly noisy (the aliens aren't silent) shape-shifting heads. Give us a believably loving and respectful Hollywood couple and we're in.

At least I'm in. And, I suspect, a demographic that doesn't normally embrace horror is in for this film that is not only well acted by adults and children (and aliens) alike, but well re-written by Krasinski, who, I am guessing, modified what were probably more generic gender characterisations in the original script by Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, to present a more balanced than usual distribution of blame and bravery between the male and female characters.

I could be wrong (again). If so well done to Woods and Beck, who wrote the original screenplay and who are contracted to write the sequel. I guess time will tell.

Certainly some of us are, unlike the aliens - who look remarkably similar to last century's aliens - finally beginning to evolve into gender-conscious and responsible beings who accept that the principles of feminism are the future, or at least the present and near future. Beyond that, it will depend on the backlash. If the guys with the money, madness, misogyny and might get their way, it might be a never-ending human silence as we self-destruct and the planet is taken over by screeching, shape-shifting aliens with bullets for teeth!

But let's hope not. Let's hope for a quiet(ish), kind place instead.