It’s no surprise when the Oscars ignore crowd-pleasing genre flicks. When it comes to best picture consideration, Mad Max: Fury Road, Logan, and The Dark Knight may as well be Transformers: The Last Knight. Genre movies don’t receive the same respect as dramas, even though comedy and horror are harder to pull off. Startling viewers with jump scares or landing a perfectly timed call-back requires a high degree of technical precision. Last year, Jordan Peele, an actor known for comedy, directed Get Out, one of the decade’s best horror movies. And now, John Krasinski, another actor known for comedy tackles the genre and knocks It out of the park. It’s only April but A Quiet Place (which Krasinski directs and co-writes) will go down as one of the 2018’s best genre films. Coming in at a taut 90-minutes, A Quiet Place is packed with thrills and even a few heartfelt moments.

A Quiet Place unfolds in the not-too-distant future after a mysterious catastrophe. At some point, bloodthirsty creatures (think human-sized versions of the Cloverfield monster) began popping up and wreaking havoc on the population. We never learn where they come from or how far they’ve spread. What we do know is that they’re lethal, lightning quick, and drawn to even the faintest of sounds. Humanity’s only advantage is that these beasts can’t see. So far, no one has discovered a weakness, so survival depends on not making noise.

The film focuses on a family of four. There are protective mom and dad, Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and Lee (John Krasinski) and their two children, their timid son Marcus (Noah Jupe) and their defiant daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds). Regan is deaf and her family’s ability to speak sign language gives them an edge in staying undetected. They reside on an isolated farm where they live off the land and stay out of harm’s way. They have a good system in place but there’s one major hitch: Evelyn is pregnant and due any day. Few things are as noisy and tough to keep quiet as a newborn baby. On one tranquil day, with the family separated, a loud accident sends a pack of creatures descending upon the farm. Alone and trapped, it will take all of the family’s courage and survival skills – plus a bit of luck – to outwit the beasts and escape with their lives.

A Quiet Place begins with a thrilling prologue that sets the tone and establishes the stakes. The script only continues to ratchet up the tension for the rest of the way. This film contains several nail-biting set pieces that work like gangbusters. It’s clear the screenwriters (Krasinski, Bryan Woods, and Scott Beck) carefully studied horror tropes before penning the script. Krasinski shows a keen understanding of suspense and timing that many genre filmmaking veterans fail to grasp. A Quiet Place doesn’t rely on a nerve-wracking score to induce jump scares, it does it the old fashion way: With slowly mounting tension. First, Krasinski lays the groundwork for the world’s rules of survival and then he proceeds to twist, bend, and break them, to hair-raising effect. The film includes smart setups and payoffs that are anxiety-inducing without feeling like cheats.

Krasinski litters his film with small details that show he put a lot of thought into crafting the world and the ways people survive in it. The characters reduce noise by walking barefoot on trails of sand they lay down on the paths they travel the most. They also paint spots on their home’s floorboards to signal the least-creaky places to step. They even set up a silent warning system that flashes red when the creatures are near. And the only thing scarier than invading razor-mouthed predators is invading razor-mouth predators illuminated by a blood red glow. Any film with a conceit this extreme doesn’t hold up to scrutiny – what if someone had a sudden bout of gas? – but Krasinski puts enough effort into showing us how people get by to help us suspend our disbelief for 90-minutes.

They named this movie A Quiet Place for a reason. It is sparse on dialogue. Survivors spend every waking moment stifling noise but sooner or later something must go BANG. And do things ever go BANG. A Quiet Place has the most memorable sound mixing since Phantom Thread’s hilarious toast-scraping scene. Even if the sound engineering wasn’t on point, the movie’s sound effects are subdued for so long that loud noises hit with more intensity. As one of the creatures buried its claws into the side of a corn silo the soundwaves pounded their way into my head and felt like a boxer using my eardrums as punching bags.

A Quiet Place has a few other audio tricks up its sleeve. Directors visually manipulate audiences by using different camera lenses, focal lengths, and aspect ratios to alter the visuals. Millicent Simmonds’ character Regan is deaf, and Krasinski chose to muffle the sound every time he switches to her point of view. That sound dampening trick creates an almost claustrophobic effect. Good luck not biting your lip when that muffling effect kicks in and one of the creatures pops up in the frame.

A Quiet Place isn’t some mindless frightfest, it has a big sentimental heart and deals with some meaningful themes. I don’t know much about Krasinski’s personal life, but I would be shocked if he didn’t become a dad fairly recently. He’s working through the type of sentimental feelings directors usually broach in navel-gazing indie flicks. I’m glad he examines parenthood through a horror movie lens because it adds more depth to the story. Parents have three jobs in life; to make their children feel loved, to protect their children, and to prepare their children for the world. By the time the drama in the film begins ramping up, Evelyn and Lee have failed at all three.

All four members of the family have a flaw gnawing at their heart and Krasinski gives each of them a chance to work through their emotional issues. In a typical slasher flick, characters are little better than chum, tossed into the killer-infested water to satisfy our bloodlust. That’s not the case here. Instead, we have a reason to empathize with the people in this movie. Our desire to see them survive is matched by our need to see them heal. A Quiet Place doesn’t rely on monsters and jump scares to win us over, it’s the tender moments between characters that hook us and keep us riveted.

A Quiet Place is the film people thought they were getting last year with Trey Edward Shults’ divisive It Comes at Night. Krasinski provides everything you want from a horror film; gripping performances, smart direction, and an exhilarating moviegoing experience. Krasinski delivers a poignant tale of parental anxieties and sneaks it into theatres under the guise of a creature feature. It’s a film that merges its indie-movie DNA with a thrill-a-minute popcorn flick. A Quiet Place goes for the jugular one moment and tugs at your heartstrings the next. It’s a must-see for fans of genre cinema.