Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: John Krasinski
Starring: Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, Cillian Murphy, Noah Jupe, John
Krasinski, Djimon Hounsou
Directed by its leading man John Krasinski, 2018's
A Quiet Place
boasted a cracking premise. Earth has been invaded by aliens who hunt
using only their hearing. Keep quiet and you'll stay safe. Of course,
that's easier said than done, but one family, the Abbotts, have an
advantage – thanks to their hearing impaired daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds), they're fluent in Sign Language.
A Quiet Place was a confined thriller that made great use of
its limited setting and mined its directorially challenging premise for
all it was worth, boasting some impressive visual storytelling on
Krasinski's part. A sequel was unnecessary but inevitable, and with
Krasinksi's patriarch killed off at the climax of the first film he gets
to focus on directing here.
With a budget reportedly three times higher than its predecessor,
A Quiet Place: Part II takes the
Aliens/Terminator 2
route, expanding its world in a way that sees it effectively change
genres, going from horror to action movie. Where the aliens were kept
largely in the shadows, now they're running around in the broad daylight
from the off, with the sequel opening with a flashback to the day they
landed.
This opening sequence, which gives Krasinski a brief chance to reprise his
role, is, much like the movie as a whole, pointless but fun and
well-mounted. Part of what kept us on our toes throughout the first movie
was how it began with the killing of the Abbott family's toddler son,
which made us feel like anyone could potentially be offed. While the
opening sequence is executed in thrilling fashion by Krasinski and his FX
team, it's somewhat sapped of tension because we know the Abbotts make it
out of this particular scenario.
We then cut to the immediate aftermath of the first film. Mom Evelyn (Emily Blunt) has recently given birth to a newborn and has devised a way to keep the
rugrat quiet, by locking it in a box with an oxygen tank. Along with her
kids, Regan and Marcus (Noah Jupe), Evelyn heads off in search of a
new home and comes across Emmett (Cillian Murphy), an old friend
whose family have been wiped out. Emmett lives a hermit like existence,
sealed away in a bunker beneath an old steel foundry.
Surprisingly, having established her as a Ripley-esque heroine in the
climax of the first film, Blunt's Evelyn is largely sidelined here as
Emmett and Regan take centre stage when the latter heads off on her own in
search of the source of a mysterious radio broadcast. Emmett gives in to
Evelyn's pleading and takes off after Regan, the two eventually forming a
reluctantly paired alien fighting duo.
Emmett and Regan's relationship - which is abrasive at first but blends
into a surrogate father/daughter dynamic - provides the movie with its
emotional centre, and Murphy and Simmonds portray this in a sweet and
sensitive fashion as they take it in turns to save each other's asses in
between bouts of bickering.
This sequel has one major disadvantage compared to its predecessor. In the
first movie, the Abbotts had no idea how to fight back against the aliens
until a late Shyamalan-esque twist that saw Regan use the frequency of her
hearing aid to disrupt the ETs, causing their heads to split open like a
flowered onion. Now that Regan is armed with this weapon from the off,
there simply isn't the same potential for terror and so Krasinski is
forced to throw more aliens in his protagonists' path to counter this
narrative setback he's unwittingly created for himself.
Thankfully, Krasinski proves himself as comfortable with big action
set-pieces as he proved with tight, confined suspense sequences. Sure, his
set-pieces do feel a little too influenced by other sci-fi movies –
specifically Spielberg's War of the Worlds and the
aforementioned T2 – but he assembles them in a refreshingly
considered way, refusing to bombard the viewer with quick cuts and a noisy
soundtrack. In fact, it's when the film drops out its sound altogether to
put us in the headspace of Regan that it works best, proving that when it
comes to horror, a monster lurking quietly in the background of a shot is
far more effective than one leaping into the screen accompanied by a pair
of crashing cymbals.
A Quiet Place: Part II is the very definition of an
unnecessary but obligatory sequel, and by the time we get to its climax it
begins to feel like Krasinski has scraped every last bit of honey from
this particular jar. But what thrills he does manage to mine from this
premise justifies a second go around with the Abbotts. It was never going
to replicate the thrills of the first film because so much of that movie
relied on our unfamiliarity with its world, but
A Quiet Place: Part II confirms Krasinski as one of the most
confident directors working in mainstream genre cinema today.
A Quiet Place: Part II is on
Netflix UK/ROI now.