A Quiet Place Part II: More suspense, new survivors, epic action

The producers may have toyed with naming this sequel A Quieter Place, but the original’s bold and even haunting take demanded more respect. And now that Part 3 is already in the works, it’s just as well. Calling it A Quietest Place might have signaled a real apocalypse.

In a revolutionary opening act, A Quiet Place’s first line of voiced dialogue only arrives 38 minutes in. Besides its disquieting soundtrack, the sci-fi horror thriller served as a break-out film role for John Krasinski, whose charming, iconic and unforgettable nice guy performance as Jim continues to echo through the annals of our timelines thanks to a string of immortal memes and an army of undying The Office fans.

Serving as a directorial debut for Krasinski, who called the shots on three The Office episodes, A Quiet Place showcased his untapped talent as a filmmaker who has now garnered compliments from horror grandmasters, Stephen King and William Friedkin. Announcing to the world that he could act and direct, he became a triple threat by simultaneously revealing that by some miracle he’d managed to convince Emily Blunt to say “yes”.

Once turned down by Steve Carrell as Ruthie “Pig Face” Draper in Dan in Real Life, Blunt seems to have a thing for The Office’s cast. Now a bona fide headline act on the back of a breakthrough role as The Young Victoria and countless A-list performances, the British movie star’s become Hollywood royalty too. Taking Tom Cruise under her wing and demonstrating a knack for obliterating alien scum in Edge of Tomorrow, she’s expunged any remaining airs and graces by getting her hands dirty opposite her husband in A Quiet Place.

Together the low-key power couple share undeniable chemistry, which compelled and established A Quiet Place’s emotional core as a family saga as they try to make sense of what turns out to be an invasion. Alien predators, who are ultra-sensitive to sound, murder anything that makes the slightest sound, which was ultimately disconcerting for popcorn lovers and just desserts for those suffering from misophonia.

The sci-fi horror thriller turned “monster movie” showed the Abbotts scrambling to get to a place of safety as the aforementioned “alien scum” encircled what may be the last nice people on the planet. As we lived vicariously through their apocalyptic misadventure, part of the thrill was the audio-visual experience as noise became an accomplice to some pretty ghastly deaths.

Horrors tend to reflect an underlying insecurity or aspect affecting our modern lives. For A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II, one interpretation is that it’s an indictment on just how noisy our lives have become. Noise can be interpreted literally as our over-stimulating sound environments or the mind clutter that can sometimes overwhelm us as we pursue productivity and cave to the fear of missing out. Before we get too metaphysical, A Quiet Place isn’t just a run-of-the-mill monster movie… it’s one of the finest living examples.

Spilling into A Quiet Place Part II, John Krasinski winds back the clock to the onset as a War of the Worlds scale invasion interrupts a sleepy town and Little League baseball game. Besides being an epic kickstart, this cataclysmic event reminds us of the state of the outside world and the plight of the Abbotts, picking up the story to find the survivors still on the run. Having learned the hard way about the mysterious creatures that hunt them, they’ve become accustomed to being quiet and traveling lightly with a few tricks up their sleeves.

A Quiet Place Part II introduces Evelyn, Regan and Marcus to an old friend in Emmett who becomes an unlikely ally in the fight for survival. Starring Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe, the tight knit unit add Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou to their extended family as the “playground” gets bigger and more dangerous. Instead of focusing on the Abbotts alone, the sequel spreads and splits into two quests as each team attempts to find medical supplies and other nice survivors. Discovering more secrets about what lies beyond the confines of their new compound and how to deal with the constant threat of being tracked down, they rally as they overcome suspicion and wrestle with new deadly challenges.

A Quiet Place Part II latches onto what made A Quiet Place a strikingly beautiful, haunting and epic quest with a budget three times its size. Maintaining the novelty of its on-and-off silent movie soundtrack, it counterbalances this dexterous sound design with eye-popping creature visuals to rival Alien. Showing more of the sonar hunters, this sci-fi horror thriller aligns itself with Jurassic World, leveraging action-adventure instead of simply relying on jump scares and what goes bump in the night.

Playing to many of the original horror’s strengths, it’s sensational to expand the A Quiet Place universe, something that seemed inevitable after the first chapter’s critically acclaimed runaway success. The Abbotts continue to be dwarfed by the wide open spaces of a now overgrown planet, recalling the eerie disquiet of lockdown, much like Will Smith’s lonely New York City meandering does in I Am Legend.

It’s a quiet joy to watch Cillian Murphy take on an equal-opposite role to Emily Blunt, for the liberal use of sign language and a role reprisal for Simmonds, who’s actually deaf in real life. What A Quiet Place Part II lacks in shimmering novelty, it makes up for in imagination and scope, serving up a bigger cast, more suspenseful action sequences and a rollicking sequel that continues its lush world-building as it gently gravitates towards the awe-inspiring magnitude of Jurassic World.