A QUIET PLACE PART II
Worth making a noise about
Make some noise for the sequel!
RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 97 minutes
Director John Krasinski
Cast Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmons,
Noah Jupe, Cillian Murphy, John Krasinski, Djimon Hounsou
It’s impossible to talk about A Quiet Place Part II without acknowledging the fact that its release plans have essentially been bookends for the pandemic. Receiving its New York premiere in March 2020, the movie finally hit US cinemas on 28 May 2021, just as the world began to open up again. It’s entirely fitting for a post-apocalyptic movie peppered with the hope that perhaps life could be good again.
There’s also a good reason why Paramount held it back for a year rather than opting to push the movie out on streaming channels. It’s built for the cinema – and takes a louder, more actionpacked approach than the intimate chills of its predecessor.
After a powerful flashback to day one of the monster invasion – a shocking opener that throws you straight into the thick of the panic – we find ourselves on day 474, the day after A Quiet Place.
John Krasinki’s Lee is dead, but Emily Blunt’s Evelyn and her deaf daughter Regan (Millicent Simmons) have discovered that the creatures have a weakness to the signals produced by Regan’s hearing aid, which make them disorientated and able to be killed. The isolated farmstead where they had been hiding out is destroyed, so Evelyn and Regan, along with anxious son Marcus (Noah Jupe) and the new baby (who’s kept in a box with an oxygen mask to minimise noise) must venture out into the world in the hope of finding other survivors.
Part II is a foot fetishist’s fantasy film (or perhaps worst nightmare, depending on the fetish…) with so much of the movie focused on the bare feet of the family as they take their first steps away from the parameters of their home and into untrodden ground, following signs of life some miles away.
Extreme close-ups of feet and faces keep us locked to them, while occasional, judiciously used moments inside Regan’s head – where we see and hear the world as she does (that is, in silence) – keep things highly tense. Krasinki proves himself once again to be an inventive and distinctive director, elevating
A Quiet Place Part II well above bog-standard monster madness.
It’s a noisier film than the first, with a more conspicuous non-diegetic soundtrack in addition to the snaps and crackles of the world around them. While it can’t quite match the sense of innovation and unbearable silent tension of the first film, the decision to journey in a different direction is a smart one. There’s only so much hiding, being quiet and accidentally making a noise the characters can do.
Instead, the family comes across Cillian Murphy’s Emmett,
A fast, frightening spectacle that should blast off the cobwebs
a former family friend but now an isolationist, who initially refuses to help but is talked round by the spirited Regan. Emmett and the family are soon drawn into three separate missions, widening the world of the film further and allowing for new forms of peril.
Structurally, it works brilliantly, flipping between the different characters and giving us cliffhangers for each of them, keeping the audience constantly on edge. This also means it’s no single actor’s film. All of the main four have arcs and hero moments, with Jupe and Simmons given the chance to shine and mark themselves out as actors to watch. It’s an emotional film too, something brought out in shared quiet moments which arise amid the mayhem.
In terms of narrative logic it’s perhaps less strong; when the rollercoaster ride has finished you may find yourself picking apart certain plot points. But while it’s hurtling full steam ahead you’re unlikely to have time to even catch your breath.
Though it deals with a world ostensibly at rock bottom, this is at heart a very hopeful film, one that believes in humanity and the possibility that we can come back from disaster to a world that could eventually be as good as the one we left behind.
This is coincidental, of course, but as an early foray into the cinema after the real life horror of the past year, A Quiet Place Part II is a fast, frightening spectacle that should blast off the cobwebs of months of isolation. There definitely are worse places you could be. Rosie Fletcher
Cillian Murphy liked the original so much he wrote an email to Krasinski to say so, but chickened out and didn’t send it.