John Krasinski’s new genre-defying thriller “A Quiet Place,” co-written, produced and directed by Krasinski himself, centers around a family of four — including a pregnant mother and a deaf daughter — that must learn to survive making as little noise as possible, or face attack from vicious beasts that hunt by sound.

Krasinski, who plays Lee Abbott, discussed the film, its characters and their nail-biting journey hiding from deadly creatures on March 23 with journalists from 15 college newspapers across the country. The Brown University alumus answered questions about his first foray into directing, how he wrote and rewrote the film’s story and his experience working with wife, Emily Blunt, who acts beside Krasinski as Evelyn Abbott.

The actor is mostly known for his comedic roles — many recognize him as Jim Halpert from NBC’s “The Office.” So when asked how he prepared himself to take on a horror film, the actor said it came down to writing about what he knew: family.

“Doing a genre movie was something that I didn’t know how to do,” he said. “Well, ‘write what you know,’ which is this family, and the scares will come organically because people will be afraid for this family. So that’s the tactic I took there.”

He added, “One of the best bits of advice my dad gave me when we were kids is (that) one of the most confident things you can say as a human being … is ‘I don’t know.’ And so I was willing to say that on this a lot. And it really helped.”

Krasinski didn’t know how to create a world in which humans intentionally muted their own sound. So he researched. And he learned things about the everyday world that he’d never noticed before, he said.

“There’s a scene where we walk through the forest, and when an entire group of people goes dead silent, you realize what a forest really sounds like,” Krasinski said. “Because I think in our world, we’re always on our phones and we always have a lot going on. If you asked people, ‘What are ten sounds that you can hear in the forest?’ I bet we’d only get through two.”

“A Quiet Place” premieres in theaters Friday, but it opened to stellar reviews at the SXSW Film Festival in March. Krasinski said that was “one of the best moments of my whole life.” The film has a 99 percent “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of Wednesday night.

“The things that I was scared of with this movie ended up being sort of our superpower, and what was special about the movie,” Krasinski said. “I’m really glad I took the leap.”

Published on April 4, 2018 at 10:26 pm

Contact Brigid: brkenned@syr.edu