A Quiet Place Part II (2021)
dir. John Krasinski
Rated: PG-13
image: ©2021 Paramount Pictures
With A Quiet Place Part II, director John Krasinski has delivered a cinematic experience every bit as exhilarating and taut as the original. At only 97 minutes, this sequel is lean, allowing Krasinski – who wrote this installment solo, without the help of Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, the writing team behind the original – to keep the suspense ratcheted up for nearly every minute of the picture. As exciting and thematically rich as Part II is, though, Krasinski’s screenplay also suffers from a few logic problems that the movie can’t quite overcome. Still, this is a hell of a ride, especially as seen on the big screen, where the movie’s thrills come at you larger than life, the way movies are meant to be experienced.
This new chapter begins with a flashback to the day that the strange sightless alien creatures, who hunt their prey using a finely tuned sense of hearing, began their attack on humans. We see Lee, who died saving his family at the end of the first movie, picking up a few items at the store on his way to his son Marcus’s baseball game. The game ends abruptly when a giant fireball streaks across the sky. This mysterious meteor-like anomaly has seemingly brought the deadly creatures to Earth, and we see our heroes, the Abbott family, scramble for safety.
The movie then cuts to moments after the climax of the first film. Evelyn, her newborn infant, and her young children, Marcus and Regan, venture out in search of other survivors after losing Lee. They unwittingly stumble onto the compound of Emmett, a friend of Lee’s, whom we met at the baseball game in the flashback opening. Emmett has set his compound, an abandoned steel foundry, with numerous booby traps, and Marcus’s leg is mangled by a bear trap as the family tries to escape one of the monsters.
Emmett reluctantly helps the Abbott clan, but he insists that they can’t stay. He’s become bitter and uncaring for anyone else’s plight after the death of his wife. As tightly paced and action-focused as A Quiet Place Part II is, Emmett represents the major underlying theme of the movie. When Evelyn insists that there are more survivors out there who need his help, Emmett coldly responds, “The people that are left, they’re not the kind of people worth saving.”
It’s a different genre of horror movie, but Emmett, and the movie’s preoccupations that it explores through him, have a distinctly Zombie movie vibe. Humanity’s willingness or reluctance to help each other in unimaginable circumstances has been examined in movies like The Night of the Living Dead, both versions of Dawn of the Dead, and, with a comedic twist, Shaun of the Dead. So, while this theme is nothing new, Krasinski manages to keep it fresh.
His movie separates people into three distinct types. There are people like the Abbotts, cautious and pragmatic when dealing with others, but inclined to believe the best about their fellow humans. Emmett represents a reluctant helpfulness and humanity’s inclination towards nihilism and tending to care only for one’s self. The third type, represented by a group we meet later in the film in one of its most harrowing action/horror set pieces, are distinguished by the basest human instincts. They are practically feral; this is a group who would be right at home in a movie like The Hills Have Eyes, or a Rob Zombie shocker like House of 1000 Corpses.
We meet the last group as Emmett helps Regan make her way to the Atlantic coast. The young deaf girl, who discovered in the first movie – with the help of her cochlear implant – that high-pitched feedback broadcast through a speaker exposes the monsters’ Achilles heel, is on a mission. After arriving in the valley where Emmet’s compound is located, the Abbotts discover a radio signal that they couldn’t pick up at their house. It broadcasts the same song, Bobby Darin’s Beyond the Sea – which movies and TV never seems to tire of using – on a loop. Regan surmises that the song is a clue to the location of a group of survivors, and she initially leaves on her own to find them. When Evelyn learns of what her daughter has done, she implores Emmet to find Regan and protect her.
I’ll (attempt to) artfully dance around third-act spoilers here, but the radio signal is one of the biggest flaws of the film. The fact that the people broadcasting the song as some tortured clue in a game, instead of broadcasting the actual information they want people to know, makes little sense.
There is also a last-minute rescue that hinges on Marcus listening to the signal with his headphones on in a moment that makes very little sense for him to be doing so. This scene is, admittedly, thrillingly staged. The best defensive advantage about Emmet’s foundry compound are the huge bunkers under three feet of concrete that are all but soundproof. Late in the film, Marcus explores the foundry while Evelyn ventures out for antibiotics to treat his leg wound. When he inadvertently attracts one of the monsters, he quickly moves himself and his infant sibling into one of the bunkers. Once the door is closed – which is kept from locking shut by placing a towel over the latch – any occupants must open it again before they run out of air and suffocate.
Krasinski’s new editor, Michael P. Shawver, uses cross-cutting, like in the first film, to build suspense between the separate perils of Marcus, Evelyn, and Emmet and Regan. The action finale is breathtaking stuff, but it’s cheapened by a sloppy plot point in which the life-saving towel is inexplicably left off the latch in one key moment.
The ensemble of A Quiet Place Part II work well together. Emily Blunt, Krasinski’s real-life wife, is as gritty and determined as Evelyn as she was in the first installment. Child actor Noah Jupe, whom I’ve come to appreciate even more since the 2018 release of A Quiet Place, through strong performances in Honey Boy, Ford v Ferrari, and the limited series The Undoing, does an excellent job here as Marcus.
Deaf actress Millicent Simmonds, who takes very seriously her deaf advocacy in the film and TV industries, is a low-key action badass as Regan. The wonderfully creepy Cillian Murphy is pitch-perfect as the disillusioned Emmet. The movie never takes seriously the possibility that Emmet might follow his darker instincts and betray the Abbott family, but Murphy’s performance is still effectively nuanced.
Despite its plot shortcomings – of which there were also a few in the original A Quiet Place – Krasinski’s follow-up to his smash-hit mostly works. The satisfying action and horror here is an almost non-stop thrill ride. A Quiet Place Part II is as memorable and fun as its predecessor.
Why it got 3.5 stars:
- A Quiet Place Part II has some plot point logic issues, but it’s still an engrossing, thrilling time at the movies. If you liked the first installment, there’s no reason you won’t like the sequel.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- Roman numerals might be making a comeback in movie titles. This explainer about the phenomenon is an old read, but an entertaining one.
- There was a minute- or two-long introduction before the movie started featuring John Krasinski thanking the audience for coming out to an actual theater to support the industry. You’re welcome, Mr. Krasinski.
- The movie uses a clever device in the opening action sequence where the sound cuts in and out to give us Regan’s experience of the event. It’s never used again after that first bit, but I wish it had been.
- I was reminded how iconic the set design of the climax of the first movie was when the sequel transports us back there. I didn’t have a chance to re-screen the first movie in anticipation of seeing Part II, but I found I didn’t really need to. The events of the first movie stayed with me years after having seen it.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- I saw A Quiet Place Part II at the Inwood Theater. There were five or six of us in attendance (it was a late afternoon, weekday screening). I’m getting old, y’all. I was sitting directly in front of a group of teenagers, probably 16- and 17-year-olds. They were great; any time they talked, it was hushed whispers, and they seemed to be into the movie, but… I don’t know, I felt how young they were compared to me.