A friend of mine once said he has a principle: that the true measure of a movie is how much you can remove its gimmick and still be left with something special. It’s a good rule of thumb, and like any rule regarding movies, it’s made to be broken—it’s perfectly possible to double down on high-concept premise so wildly that there’s no need for niceties like meaningful drama. A Quiet Place, this year’s horror sleeper hit, directed by John Krasinski, is nothing if not high-concept. In a post-apocalyptic future, vicious monsters (aliens? mutants?) have invaded and almost exterminated mankind. The hook is that the monsters, while seemingly indestructible, can’t see, but can hear the slightest sound. So a surviving family, played by Krasinski, his real-life wife Emily Blunt, and a duo of children-in-peril, have to scrape by in near-total silence, communicating by sign language and watching every step. It’s all an excuse for jump-scares, for squeezing fear out of otherwise ordinary environments, and for the quiet place to be suddenly rattled by a frenzied set-piece. (One involving red lights and fireworks does very well).

Yet I can’t help but think of the aspects of its concept left unexplored. Consider the psychological implications of never being able to speak, laugh, or cry after a lifetime of doing so. Consider that it had gone on for a year, and there’s no sign that you’d ever get it back. It’s enough to drive any sane person mad, even without aliens or mutants. And then consider that A Quiet Place is almost entirely unconcerned with such psychology. The film’s engine is more the usual combo of physical danger and underlying family pathos—and given the movie’s achievements, which include ruling the spring box office and getting green-lit for a sequel, that might be for the best. It is the psychological aspects of a horror movie that really have the potential to disquiet an audience; the rest is just for fun.

So this is slumber party stuff, through and through: some frights, some showdowns, some drama, some surprises, some light squeamishness, and some triumph, never breaking the boundaries of PG-13 while getting in and out in 90 minutes. The fact that $188 million worth of American ticket buyers were captivated by so little talking speaks not just to all the visual hand-holding but to the draw of a good clean fright night. In my experience, it’s the genre where young moviegoers are most likely to roll the dice on a novel pitch. On that level, it works, capitalizing on its ambitions by taking them only so far. Even its stretches of implausibility can’t rightly be chastised as flaws. They’re more like conversation pieces for a monster-movie audience—something for you and your friends to fondly joke about after the show, having been engaged for the duration, pleasantly goosed, and able to sleep soundly.

✬✬✬✩✩

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A Quiet Place is now available on home video and streaming. I don’t know why I keep seeing outlets refer to this as John Krasinski’s directing debut—it seems kind of unfair to the two features he directed before it.