A Quiet Place Part II, the Covid-delayed sequel to 2018’s surprise horror hit A Quiet Place, is the rare sequel that (almost) equals its predecessor, a skillfully calibrated exercise in tension with a few new ideas and enough scares to sustain its tightly coiled 90 minutes courtesy of writer/director John Krasinski’s cannily compelling survivalist screenplay and top-notch professional filmmaking sheen.
An immediate continuation of the first picture’s scary predicament — a family living in rural, isolated near silence, stalked by ferocious, blind, insect-like creatures that hunt by a finely attuned sense of sound, A Quiet Place Part II is a family unification parable which can easily be interpreted as the challenges of holding a fractured clan together under extreme duress and amidst unexpected loss. In that sense, it’s a relevant zeitgeist bullseye amidst the life-altering ravages of the last year.
Krasinski wastes no time plunging us into a nightmare in the clever opening, an extended flashback tracing the origin of the terror, depicted here a violent intrusion into an idyllic, small-town afternoon, a Norman Rockwell-esque vision of homespun Americana beset by malevolence as neighbors, friends and conviviality are catastrophically upended. Plunging fireballs streak the clear blue skies, presumably carrying the beasts that quickly wreak havoc up and down main street in an inventive sequence deploying subjective and objective sound by alternating full throttle effects and absolute silence.
Heroine Emily Blunt, expectedly terrific, returns as newly single mother Evelyn Abbott, widowed at the end of the last film and this time on her own with two adolescents and a newborn in tow. If the first outing imagined inventive sound disruptions to exploit the family’s fear of noise-induced attacks — a painful wound, a home birth, a battery-operated child’s toy — the new film resources equally clever maneuvers (an early scene involving a bear trap becomes an excruciating endurance test while a contraption involving a crate and an oxygen tank proves an effective baby pacifier).
Picking up where the first picture ended, Evelyn and kids Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and Marcus (Noah Jupe) abandon the family farm in search of other survivors, seeking refuge in a shellshocked former factory, also the hiding place of family friend Emmett (Cillian Murphy), who himself has lost a spouse and child and who reluctantly grants them subterranean shelter.
At the halfway point the picture has done a serviceable job of continuation, and just when it appears this 90-minute follow-up might be content as a more than serviceable copy of the original, interesting things begin to happen with surrogate parent dimensions and the notion that community is what may save us. Or not.
Not content to lay in claustrophobic wait for the next surprise attack, Regan strikes out on her own after discovering a radio frequency she’s certain has come from coastal survivors. While there may be safety in numbers, her lone trek offers none and after a terrifying close call en route, Emmett becomes her unlikely protector and guide.
But Regan and Marcus are resourceful enough to take care of themselves, and while the picture takes a few detours — including a smart and scary one featuring the great Djimon Honsou and an unexpected survivors colony — both youngsters drive the picture’s second half and dominate its climax in a superbly constructed sequence with a huge payoff and perfect final shot.
The usual knock on horror pictures is that they are somehow “lesser than” dramas unless they are “elevated” (read: self-serious). Yet as an Aliens-like armchair grabber, Krasinski has fashioned as cinematic as anything Hollywood has produced in ages.
On that score, A Quiet Place Part II is an expert piece of visual and aural storytelling with the kind of skillfully shot, scored and edited extended sequences that Hollywood abandoned long ago — it’s pure filmmaking expertise right to its spellbinding final moment of inspired cross-cutting. I might even say that the marriage of imagination and technique on display here is what has been missing for quite a while in the majority of overblown commercial American movies.
The quartet of lead actors (including Murphy’s best performance in an American film) commands empathy at every twist and turn; the knockout duo of young stars Simmonds and Jupe yields authoritative performances as good as any this year; their heroics require brains, not capes.
A Quiet Place Part II may have been delayed a year, but well worth the wait.
3 stars.
