A Quiet Place Part II (2021 | USA | 97 minutes | John Krasinski)
Set to have been released in March of 2020, just as the country was going into lockdowns, A Quiet Place Part II was among the would-be blockbusters that opted to wait out the virus rather than partake in the premium video-on-demand experiment that became the primary release format of the year. Now, just in time for revised CDC guidance around masks, falling Covid-19 case counts, and increasing vaccination rates, the sequel is poised to be among the first huge cinema-only releases of this cautiously-optimistic new year. Picking up right where the first installment left off, with a family emerging from a long, cautious stretch spent huddled alone and self-sufficient in their surprisingly creaky farmhouse after a terrifying skirmish with deadly alien invaders, its timing couldn’t have been better (or worse, depending on your level of cave syndrome).
The press screening that I saw — masked, fully vaccinated, wearing real pants, in distanced seating, and eschewing my beloved concessions – was the first big screen moviegoing experience I’ve had in well over a year and it was terrific. Going in, I wondered which would be scarier: the movie or being inside with strangers for the first time in ages. The answer may be “a little bit of both”, but within minutes of the film’s tour de force opening flashback to the last day of the “before times” — a small town Radio Shack still in business, people dining inside restaurants, attending noisy community sporting events — the balance of my anxieties shifted squarely in the direction of Krasinski’s long-awaited follow-up.
With three years having passed since the original, braver viewers might do well to revisit it before diving into the sequel (sensitive souls can skim the Wikipedia synopsis for a refresher) as most of the action takes place in the minutes following that film’s terrifying standoff between the Abbot family and the vicious sharp-eared and toothed alien hunters. On day 474 post-invasion, down a couple beloved family members, with their home in flooded shambles, matriarch Evelyn (Emily Blunt) gathers her two children (Noah Jupe and Millicent Simmonds), her newborn baby in a handmade cry box (great invention, btw), and some supplies as they venture off in search of a new quiet place.
Barefooted and armed with their recent discovery of a weakness in the until-recently impervious armor of their extraterrestrial enemies (something about a cochlear implant and audio feedback, don’t question the science), they venture from their fertile valley, down the sandy trail, and beyond into into an uncertain world.
There, they’ll encounter a reluctant ally who’s found an actually quiet place to hide out for the last four hundred plus days. Without revealing too much of the plot, this installation breaks the original single-setting format by splitting the action between two group: one remains bunkered in an often claustrophobic and occasionally ingenious setting avoiding the lanky aliens and being the victim of their Venom-inspired fangs, another undertakes a quest where they’ll confront monsters foreign and domestic.
Rather than diminishing the suspense, Krasinski’s dual action multiplies the scares and allows for heightened thrills as confrontations play out (with unlikely but forgivable synchronicity) simultaneously on two fronts. Through it all, Emily Blunt again acquits herself as one of our great action stars and Millicent Simmonds more than holds her own as a fully credible counterpart. Noah Jupe makes the most of his highly expressive face as a terrible teen babysitter with a proclivity to stumble into all sorts of peril. And Cillian Murphy proves that he, too, can grow a pandemic beard.
My typical coping strategy during scary movies is to mentally catalog all of the characters’ mistakes as as a way of distancing myself and establishing a little bit of self-superiority. Happily then, this change of settings gives the characters all kinds of opportunities to make very questionable life choices that bring themselves and others into great danger. Some non-spoilery notes that kept me a little more calm: how does oxygen work? what are the ethics of pharmacy plundering in a disaster? where was that nice waterfall again? are shoes really that loud? These minor points of contention, for me at least, represent just how engrossing the action was and can be taken as an indicator of how loudly I screamed when menacing threats jumped from the edges of the screen.
Freely acknowledging some potential irrational exuberance at returning to cinemas, I found it incredibly thrilling to be afraid in public for entertainment purposes rather than for actual survival. Tightly edited, the film moves along at a great pace, validates one of my own personal apocalypse survival strategies, leverages the big screen for long tense takes and high-contrast night shots, and makes the most of a professional theatrical audio system to convey the once-again engaging sound design. Not to say that all of this wouldn’t have worked at home, but it also feels like it was worth the wait, whenever it’s safe enough to leave your own bunker and venture back into a theater.
A Quiet Place II arrives in theaters on May 28th; it is scheduled to appear on Paramount+ 45 days later.
Photos via Paramount Pictures.