“It’s a love letter to my kids,” said A Quiet Place director and star John Krasinski on what drew him to direct what has become the year’s hit horror film.

Speaking with Deadline International co-Editor Peter White, Krasinski explained that he was never a horror fan, but quickly realized upon reading A Quiet Place, which tells the story of a family, hiding on a remote farm from a horrific extraterrestrial presence, that “it was the best metaphor to parenthood.” And as parents to a three-week old, that hit a nerve with Krasinski and his wife/A Quiet Place star Emily Blunt.

While Krasinksi wasn’t completely absorbed with horror films, he did see Alien, Jaws and Rosemary‘s Baby to know there’s something about creating “tension and not showing what’s coming” to make scares on screen work. His friend, Martian screenwriter Drew Goddard advised after reading A Quiet Place that Krasinksi build the creature ASAP because it’s the 12th or 20th version that would make the pic’s final cut.

While Krasinski had directed movies before with the indie titles Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and The Hollars, A Quiet Place shot him out like a cannon last spring, underscoring his ability to break genre forms: A film with very little dialogue, in which its thrills are driven by careful balance of sound and silence. The silence part “would be a high wire act,” Krasinski said today, “if we made it to the end, it would be something powerful if we got it right.” Essentially the filmmaker and his team recorded all the sound, and responded by watching how the actors behaved on set.

A Quiet Place was a huge financial success for Paramount, made for $17M before P&A and reaping a global take of $334.5M. Currently Krasinski is writing A Quiet Place 2. Recently, A Quiet Place producers, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller, who produced the movie with Platinum Dunes, are launching their own banner Fully Formed Entertainment in the wake of the pic’s success, starting next summer at Paramount.