A Quiet Place 2: cinema’s tensest moments

John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place (2018) and its sequel, released this month, ratchets up the tension, as the hapless Abbott family once again silently contend with homicidal creatures possessing hypersensitive hearing who will strike at the smallest of noises. As the new film hits our screens, you’ll be able to hear a pin drop in cinemas everywhere.

The tensest scenes in the movies tend to conform to distinct tropes, usually involving unknown, lurking terrors, a race against the clock, hiding from tormentors, finite oxygen supplies, interrogations that go awry, or tests of physical endurance.

Music can play a part in stoking up viewers jitters; witness Jaws and Psycho, but other movies rely on silence, punctuated by the sounds of breathing, footsteps, crying, dripping taps, inadvertent coughing and buzzing insects.

As with A Quiet Place, some movies (such as The Shallows, Buried and this year’s French sci-fi movie Oxygen) are almost solely constructed around keeping the viewer in a near constant state of anxiety.