A Quiet Place Part II review – Emily Blunt horror is something to scream about
The first Quiet Place movie emitted the most piercing silent scream imaginable. This sequel from writer-director John Krasinski may not quite have all its focus and intimate horror, while the borrowings from Alien, Jurassic Park and Jaws are admittedly more obvious this time around. But it’s a really effective and engrossing followup, with an absolutely sensational “prelude” sequence at the top of the movie, a barnstorming shocker equal to anything in AQP1 – showing the panic and terror that hit planet Earth when we were initially invaded by these hideous blind beasts whose supersensitive hearing meant that humans could only survive by being silent. The slightest noise would bring slaughter.
AQP2 repurposes the situation as a quest narrative, intercutting with some style the nightmarish ordeals of those who venture out from their bunker, and those who have remained behind. The dual storylines are wrapped up together ingeniously with images and ideas slyly implanted at the very beginning. And there are some jump scares that had me Fosbury-flopping out of my seat with a yelp.
We begin effectively where the original film left off. Lee (Krasinski) is no longer with us, leaving behind his wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt), his son Marcus (Noah Jupe), hearing-impaired daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and their new baby, a possible source of fatal screams who must be subdued with an oxygen supply. This family chance across their former friend and neighbour Emmett (Cillian Murphy). When smart and resourceful Regan figures out that there may be a community of souls out there who have figured out a way to live without fear, she impulsively goes out in secret to try to find them – and tearful, wretched Evelyn persuades the morose and resentful Emmett to follow her and keep her safe. Meanwhile, she will remain with Marcus and the baby, and the double storyline commences in parallel.
As ever, the jeopardy device is the technique Regan has discovered to counterattack the monsters: her hearing aid can be induced to go into feedback, which can be amplified through a little speaker she has to carry around with her and this causes the creatures to go into spasm. But this audio shriek can’t be maintained long and also alerts
them to where the human is – so you have only a few moments to rack up your shotgun and let the alien have it right between where its eyes would be. And it’s never quite long enough.
What is interesting about this film is that it quite persuasively shows us a post-post-apocalyptic situation. In just a short time, cringing, cowed humanity has evolved into a beaten colonised life form and then evolved one step further down, into feral beings who soundlessly turn on each other.
It’s a tiny shame that the film doesn’t give more screen time to the excellent Blunt and I did wonder if Krasinski considered dreaming up some Battleship Potemkin-style scares for that vulnerable little baby; maybe he thought that was too obvious. But Simmonds is an excellent performer: bold, confident and forthright, holding her own opposite the alpha-emoting presence of Murphy.
In the end, it’s impossible not to see these gross creatures as Covid metaphors and impossible not to delight in their comeuppance. What a pleasure to see a big, brash picture like this on the big screen.
• A Quiet Place Part II is released in cinemas on 27 May in Australia, 28 May in the US, and 3 June in the UK.
was more blunt: pregnancy, she wrote in The Dialectic of Sex in 1970, was “barbaric”; childbirth was like “shitting a pumpkin”.
Yet over the past decade, epidural use has fallen in the UK – by 70,000, according to an NHS report. While this may be a good choice for some women, a pain relief-free birth is now being held up as a badge of honour. “11 hours’ labour and all natural!” crowed the Mail Online after the birth of “gorgeous George”: the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth “without recourse to any powerful painkillers”. When Katie Goodland, fiancee of footballer Harry Kane, used the hypnobirthing technique during her labour in 2018, Kane tweeted that he was: “So proud” of her “for having the most amazing water birth with no pain relief at all”. This time there was at least some pushback. Kane insisted in response that “any women can give birth however they would like”.
It is certainly interesting that in an era when technology-driven convenience is privileged in every other realm, natural birth and natural motherhood – an intensive style of parenting which involves extended breastfeeding, cosleeping, washable nappies and organic homemade purees – are on the rise. Naturally, they have become huge industries, too – with a proliferation of hypnobirthing classes and self-care products; you can even purchase bamboo baby-led weaning bowls.
The parenting culture wars – natural v medicalised birth, breast v bottle, fulltime work or stay at home, attachment parenting or leaving babies to “cry it out” – provide an impression of evenhanded debate. In reality, women’s choices are covertly weighted by the fact that only the natural side is considered virtuous and valid.
In a maddening inversion, natural motherhood is exclusively presented as woman-centred. Midwives, for example, are portrayed as helping women achieve the drug-free births everyone is assumed to want. But being cajoled and ignored when demanding anaesthesia – and being guilt-tripped into parenting in a way that is not compatible with work outside the home – is not what I call feminism. Natural motherhood is often neither natural nor woman-centred; it implies that the life of every mother – but not father – should revolve around the child.
I am for the child, but I am for the mother, too. In the febrile public debate, their interests are opposed in a zero-sum game. But mother and child are not rivals: it is in each of their interests that the other is well and content.
The Thalidomide scandal shocked many into questioning medical provisions for mothers. Yet the pendulum has now swung too far the other way. As a result of paternalistic warnings about medication in pregnancy, women are ceasing to take remedies for conditions as serious as bipolar disorder and epilepsy, even when the risk to them is overwhelming. Intolerance of everyday imperfection is resulting in exhausted and bitter mums, sidelined and resentful dads, and children who are risk-averse and unable to tolerate disappointments.
Mothers are trying too hard, and society is not trying nearly hard enough. Yet the good news is that the conditions of contemporary motherhood are so retrograde that big improvements are well within reach: proper care before, during and after birth; a rethink of work for both women and men, and the transformation of society’s incessant chastising of mothers into due value and respect.
Motherhood is feminism’s unfinished business.
• Buy a copy of Motherhood: A Manifesto by Eliane Glaser (£16.99, HarperCollins) for £14.78 at guardianbookshop.com
At a time when women are supposed to be more liberated than ever before, modern motherhood has become rigidly perfectionist