Horror films have always used sound to ramp up the terror, but perhaps none quite as effectively as A Quiet Place, the directorial debut from The Office star John Krasinski (he played Jim Halpert in the superior – yeah, I said it – US version).

The film, in cinemas today, sees a family doing their best to exist in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The form of the apocalypse? Horrid, crab-like alien meanies who hunt people as prey using super-sensitive hearing. The only way to avoid them is to stay perfectly silent all the time, which is OK unless you, for example, get pregnant, which is what happens to Krasinski’s on-and-off-screen wife Emily Blunt.

It makes for a unrelentingly tense watch, and it’s received rave reviews from the critics.


We spoke to co-writer, star and director Krasinski about walking around his house like a monster, the long-mooted Office reunion and how he resisted the urge to include a comical scene in which a character farts and alerts the attention of the aliens.