Emily Blunt terrific in 'A Quiet Place,' an almost silent sci-fi thriller

The first sign that ``A Quiet Place'' means business comes in the opening shot, in which the words ``Day 89'' are flashed onto the screen. This means a movie that contains no scene of a technician in some remote outpost, looking at a computer and saying, ``Oh . . . my . . . God.'' This means no somber address to the nation by President Morgan Freeman about aliens on the march. The worst has happened already, with even more worst to come.

Now it's just a family of five creeping through what remains of a drug store, gathering provisions. We notice at once that they are being really, really quiet. Not only that, but they're trying to be quiet, and every time one of them almost makes noise -- almost knocks something over, almost trips over something -- the mother (Emily Blunt) goes into a mortal panic.

There have been many horror films over the last century, so it's rare that someone comes up with an original angle. A society in collapse, alien invasion, a family struggling to survive -- these are familiar and reliable tropes in sci-fi horror. What's different here is the nature of the invader. They hunt by sound. If anyone makes a noise, an alien shows up immediately, as if materializing out of the air, and attacks.

So ``A Quiet Place'' is the closest thing to a silent movie since ``The Artist.'' From beginning to end, there are maybe two pages of spoken dialogue. The family knows sign language -- the teenage daughter (Millicent Simmonds) is deaf -- and when they sign, the movie provides subtitles.

As the movie starts, the family is migrating on foot from the city into the countryside. Then, immediately after the credits, the movie makes another jump to some 400 days into the crisis, with the family, quiet as ever, living in the country. And one of the first things we notice is that the mother is very pregnant. Uh-oh. Babies are noisy. For that matter, childbirth is pretty noisy. What's going to happen to these people in just a few weeks?

What follows becomes the story of ``A Quiet Place,'' one best left to be discovered. Suffice it to say that while most movies arrive at some kind of climax, this one comes to a crescendo that doesn't stop. The second half of the movie is a series of slowly built and meticulously constructed crises, one flowing into the next, each one exceeding the other, to the point that the whole experience becomes almost unbearable -- but unbearable in the best way.

Because ``A Quiet Place'' has very little spoken dialogue and because everyone on screen is trying to be silent, the viewer becomes acutely aware of sound. John Krasinski, who directed (and who plays the father), makes intelligent use of the audience's heightened attention throughout. The sudden appearances of the aliens -- disgusting, huge, insect-like creatures -- seem especially noisy and horrifying. At one point, one roars past unseen, and yet we know from the theater speaker system that it has moved, in a flash, from left to right.

Krasinski directs himself well, as the solid, protective fatherly presence. But he wisely throws most of the movie to Emily Blunt, who turns out to be a strong silent film actress. In most of her movies, Blunt's face suggests some vague, internal hell, some churning insecurity, confusion or misery. Here the hell is external -- sometimes it's even creeping around upstairs -- and Blunt receives it almost as if in rueful acknowledgment that her inner world has gone public. She plays the mother, not as an average person to whom something extraordinary has happened, but an interesting person whose life has become too interesting.

Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicle's movie critic.

A Quiet Place

3 stars out of 4 stars Sci-fi thriller. Starring Emily Blunt and John Krasinski. Directed by John Krasinski. (PG-13. 90 minutes.)