A Quiet Place Part II enjoys the “honor” of being the first big theatrical tentpole to be re-staked by COVID, and a long, wearying, unsurprising and slightly boring series of postponements led to this moment, its Paramount+ debut, six weeks or so after its relatively successful big-screen run began. The first Quiet Place found John Krasinski both in front of and behind the camera, directing himself as the dad in a family that’s fighting to survive by being quiet, lest they be killed to death by toothy, spindly, Earth-invading alien monsters that are pretty much all ears. Krasinski’s real-life wife Emily Blunt co-starred as the mom who’s pregnant and has to be as silent as humanly possible while giving birth by herself in a bathtub as a creature lurks, a sequence that quite memorably inspired in us a mighty clenching of our sphincters. So the question is, how likely is it Part II will deliver suspense more enthralling and harrowing than that?
The Gist: A sleepy main street in a small town. But the stoplight still works? Ah — a flashback! How else could we see Krasinski’s face, since his character ate it in the first movie? DAY 1, a subtitle ominously portends — so this must be the origin story of the vile aliens that can’t see but can hear the living crap out of everything so they can eat the living crap out of everything? Sort of. Lee (Krasinski) arrives at his son’s ball game late, but just in time for crazy flaming things to streak across the sky and unleash horrific miscreations upon all humanity. This sequence exists for three reasons: One, to give us something exciting and scary to happen right smack at the beginning; two, to sort of explain how people figure out that the unholy behemoths have extraordinary hearing but can’t see shit; and three, to introduce us to Emmett, a character played by Cillian Murphy, who’s enough of a big name actor that we should expect him to survive the melee and turn up later in the movie.
Now it’s DAY 474. As you may recall, the Abbott family was a family of five verging on six, then quickly cut to four, then back to five, then back again to four. That’s a long way of saying the dad and young son are kaput, and the survivors are mom Evelyn (Blunt), deaf teen Regan (Millicent Simmonds), younger brother Marcus (Noah Jupe) and the baby. You’ll recall that their knowledge of American Sign Language was a tactical advantage in their survival. The climactic events of the first film have just occurred, and they very gingerly and silently scavenge some important implements from their flooded and burned former home so they can quest for a safer place to live. Regan grabs a microphone and amplifier so she can use the squawking feedback from her hearing aid to momentarily stun the hellish demonoids, a technique the Abbotts learned last time around. And Evelyn gets the little airtight box that serves as the baby’s bassinet, and the oxygen tank that allows him to breathe in there, and keeps him from wailing him and his fam right into the digestive tract of an accursed critterfiend.
Their almost biblically barefoot-with-baby pilgrimage leads them to an old abandoned metal-smelting factory. The grounds are booby-trapped by a character we mayhaps have met before, and who’s forced to help out after Marcus steps in a bear trap and instinctively screeches his pancreas out, prompting one of the Mephistophelean damnations to emerge so Regan can paralyze it with her sonic squall and Evelyn can dead-headshot it into oblivion with her shotgun and then wary-wide-eyed exhale with relief, which is exactly the type of thing that we want to see Emily Blunt do in this movie — protective-mama her family’s way out of danger and send those mofos to hell like an absolute badass, no shoes necessary. They hole up with Emmett for a bit before hearing an honest-to-Jebus radio broadcast that prompts Regan to steal off with her noise-weapon in hopes of putting it over the airwaves and maybe offering whatever’s left of humanity a little bit of hope. Emmett goes with; meanwhile, Evelyn needs to tiptoe to the town pharmacy for medicine for Marcus’ horrible injury. Both of these little sojourns will occur without incident and there won’t be any more sightings of those monomaniacal fangclawed sonsabitches, no doubt about it.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Like the first film, Part II is the spiritual successor to M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, which scared the bejeezus out of us with crazy-suspenseful scenes in spite of myriad plot holes and contrivances. Predator and Alien are touchstones, and the far-more-birdbrained Bird Box is in the same boat. The sequel adds a pinch of The Road to the mix as well when it introduces the slightest of new twists to the formula.
Performance Worth Watching: Also like the first film, Simmonds is the spirited firebrand here. If there’s any subtext to the movies’ tight technical execution of the premise, simplistic as it may be, it’s the contrast of the kids’ youthful innocence and hope against the adults’ weary and pragmatic pessimism; Simmonds embodies the former with infectious earnestness.
Memorable Dialogue: We can go inspirational — “You said you couldn’t do enough. Now you can,” is Regan’s pep talk to a despondent Emmett. Or we can go “EEEHYAAAAAGHHHHHHGGGGHGHGHGHGGHHHH,” which is the quote, oft-repeated in some variations, that inevitably initiates some high drama.
Sex and Skin: None. This is where I’d say TBSNWLOTDRLSYDGDTF (Too Busy Silently Navigating What’s Left Of The Depressingly Ravaged Landscape So You Don’t Get Devoured To F—), but clearly, there was some f—ing going on prior to movie No. 1, perhaps unwise, since the inevitable result of the Krasinski and Blunt characters’ potent virility mightily complicated their already precarious circumstances. But we don’t see it on screen.
Our Take: The Quiet Place movies are terrifyingly close to being Walking… Slowly… Through… the.. House… and… Slowly… Reaching… for… a… Doorknob…: The Movie. The concept is simple, almost elegantly so: Any noise, possibly even a twitch or a sniff or a fidget, could kill you. As director, Krasinski effectively uses ambient sound to generate suspense or eerie tones — the buzz of insects as the Abbotts walk quietly through a field, or the hush of awe and fear as a ball game halts in its tracks and everyone looks up at a fireball cutting across the sky. Other movies might soundtrack such scenes with emotionally manipulative scores, but Krasinski knows when to shut the hell up and let the scene sell itself.
So, yeah, Part II is a lot like the first film, effectively enticing us to hold our breath as characters we mostly care about walk softly and carry a big silence lest awful things happen to them, insert a “dead silence” pun here. The sequel is about devising slightly different suspenseful scenarios in which you’re trying to keep the baby safe and quiet and standing stock-still, etc., as the behemothic unholinesses sniff around, although the end result — sharing the feedback trick with the world — lends the plot a little more dramatic consequence. Are we suspending our disbelief? Yeah, sure, why not, although we’re never really compelled to invest much energy beyond the immediate efficacy of its chills and thrills. It doesn’t have a sequence on par with the birth moment from the first movie, but otherwise, Part II is pretty much a case of second low-volume verse, same as the first, but with a melodic variation on the musical theme, so to speak.
Our Call: STREAM IT, but don’t expect much in the way of progress from the first Quiet Place. These movies just eff with you, and we’re here for it.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.
Stream A Quiet Place II on Paramount+