Well, this is nice isn't it. It's only been 6 years. I bet some of you have died since my last review.

The film landscape has changed quite a bit since we last met. Ever since The Human Centipede came out Hollywood has been in love with the idea like it's the hottest new diet fad in L.A. The concept is simple: remember those old films that you love? Let's do them again but shitter. What started out as a lovely meal 30 years ago has probably been re-digested and sharted straight down the gullets of the standard cinema-goer multiple times at this point. Remember Star Wars? It's back in the form of a bland brown sausage that's fractured into 3 chunks with a couple dangleberries in between for good measure. If you roll it around on your tongue a little you can still taste The Empire Strikes Back.

Anyway, now I've got that out of my system, let's talk about A Quiet Place; an interesting new film by Jim Halpert. The premise is pretty simple: some freaky alien monsters have appeared and wiped out most of civilization, and they hunt based on noise so y'all gotta be quiet. Sneeze and you're fucked.

We follow Jim's family of wife, boy #1, boy #2 and deaf girl as they try to survive in this environment. Boy #2 makes a din with a toy and gets killed because he's a fucking idiot. Then we skip forward and find that wife is pregnant with Jim's baby because they're fucking idiots and were trying to replace boy #2 like a dead hamster before the other kids noticed he was missing and got upset.

It's a strange film in that there's barely any plot movement. Wife is getting ready to pop out a sprog and Jim is trying to teach boy #1 about the world, while deaf girl gets stroppy about it all. These things eventually come to a head in a wholly predictable way and then it just ends.

That's not to say the film isn't enjoyable. The lack of sound is definitely a refreshing technique to see in a mainstream film, and gives it a very uncomfortable atmosphere throughout. Although it relies on jump scares for the most part, it does genuinely build tension pretty well at times too.

The frustrating thing about the film is mostly down to it's clumsy direction and writing. There are gaping plot holes and inconsistencies with regards to where and what kinds of noise they can make, and why they are where they are. It also has a tendency to be pretty heavy-handed with exposition (a white board with all the pertinent information about the monsters is slapped right into the viewers' face at the start which serves no other purpose than just that), but these are all just symptoms of an inexperienced captain at the helm of an otherwise pretty solid and experimental first stab at horror film-making.

In summary, while it's far from perfect, it's a refreshing change from the usual box office horrors that are pouring out these days. Not bad for a paper salesman.