A little over a year ago, A Quiet Place: Part II was the next movie on my to-review-list when the world fell apart and everything closed down. So it was only fitting that my first “normal” press screening with colleagues would be this film, some 15 months after it was due to come out. Fortunately, A Quiet Place: Part II is the perfect movie to mark the theatrical return: a breezy 90-minute, white knuckle horror film that reminds you why not every movie was meant to be watched from the comfort of your living room.
Despite the years-long gap in time for us, A Quiet Place: Part II sees our protagonists immediately after the events of the first film, picking up right where the previous entry left off. But not without first providing us what is arguably the best scene in the film, a flashback set on the day Lee (John Krasinski) and Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) see their lives upended by an alien invasion. Starting things off with this glimpse at normalcy, complete with plenty of loud sounds, reminds us how quickly life changed and how impactful the sound design in these films can be.
This flashback also allows the film to introduce a new character, Lee’s friend from “the before times,” Emmett (Cillian Murphy). I’m a fan of Cillian Murphy’s, so I was happy with this casting, but on paper it doesn’t make a lot of sense. A Quiet Place ended (Spoilers!) with Lee’s death and Evelyn poised as the Ellen Ripley-esque bad mama fending for her family on her own, hardened by her experiences and ready to fight to the death for her children.
A Quiet Place: Part II’s misses this opportunity with the choice to swerve away from Evelyn’s central role in the film. Instead Emmett ends up becoming a stand-in for Lee, bringing back a sort of two-parent family dynamic from the first film to the proceedings, even if the two aren’t partners. Murphy does the role as much justice as anyone can and is largely enjoyable to watch – I’m guessing it works a lot better on film that it does on paper, thanks to his performance – but it also felt like a puzzling and unnecessary distraction from should have been Evelyn’s moment, especially with an action heroine like Blunt.
I had other minor quibbles in the film, mostly your standard bizarre horror movie logic choices that leave you scratching your head about why the characters made the convoluted or bad decisions they made. But on the whole I was engaged and enjoyed the entire run time of A Quiet Place: Part II. It continues the first film’s legacy of using sound design as an ongoing element of horror and chaos, and while I think we see more of the aliens in this go around, they continue to feel as menacing as they did originally.
While the script swerved away from what I think would have been a satisfying choice in focusing on Blunt’s character, it also avoided something I expected and was dreading as well: focusing on the newborn child and the threat it posed to the family’s survival. Instead of constantly dealing with the baby crying and the family almost dying, like you might expect, the newborn is turned into a sort of ticking time bomb device by using a soundproof box with an oxygen tank. While I won’t get into spoilers, I also liked the way the film ended, with some unexpected thematic choices that once again shifted the focus from one protagonist to another.
A few years ago, as I rolled my eyes at people talking on their phones and being obnoxious in a crowded theater, I’d have begged for the chance to screen major new releases from the comfort of my own home. But getting back in theaters and seeing suspenseful film like A Quiet Place: Part II on a bigger screen, with better sound, seeing other critics I’d missed, all while ignoring my switched-off phone for a blissful hour and a half – it was a wonderful experience. What a difference a year makes.