A Quiet Place

A family are trying to stay alive in a world gone almost entirely silent, because the things hunting them are blind and hunt purely by sound. John Krasinski directs and stars alongside Emily Blunt, and the film opens with the quiet rules a household has to live by just to see another day.

This isn't the kind of horror that leaps out at you every few minutes. It's the horror of a creaking floorboard, of holding your breath through a whole scene because a character on screen is doing the same. The tension builds from what you can't hear as much as what you can.

It's a good choice for a night when you want your nerves properly worked rather than a handful of jumps, and it rewards watching without any chat from the sofa, for reasons that will become obvious in the first ten minutes.

At ninety minutes it doesn't overstay its welcome, which suits a story built entirely on withheld sound.