A Quiet Place Part II movie review: John Krasinski puts together a suspenseful sequel well worth the wait

Language: English

What makes A Quiet Place: Part II a worthy follow-up to John Krasinski’s  2018 sleeper sensation  is the same precise  use and disuse of sound . The boundary between the screen and the audience disappears in the silence. The fourth wall isn’t broken so much as we forget it exists, shifting us from a passive to an active role. When the man three rows below takes a bite of his crunchy nachos, we fear he’s put the characters onscreen in danger. His next bite is more mindful. Rarely do we see a film dictate such self-conscious behavioural changes in the audience in a cinema hall.

When the sequel to A Quiet Place was announced, there was cause for concern over repackaging what was a masterclass in suspense and sound design as merely the first instalment of a continuing saga. The rationale for a sequel always comes down to two things: popular demand and the almighty dollar. But A Quiet Place: Part II is not a meritless cash-in. Seldom has a follow-up felt like such an organic continuation. Like you’re picking up from the last episode of a show you watched yesterday, when it really has been three long years.

In a world overrun by blind alien predators with hyper-sensitive hearing, a family of survivors try to adapt to a life where making any noise means certain death. There’s no room for dysfunction here. Bottle up those grievances. Hold in that sneeze. Fix up those damn squeaking door hinges and floorboards. The original played off the anxieties of parenting, especially keeping children safe when they seem intent on courting danger. Never had the birth and cries of a baby on screen filled the viewer with such dread.

The sequel lets the kids take over. The what-happens-next keeps to the spirit of what-came-before. More creatures who don’t care for basic etiquette like knock before entering. More cat-and-mouse sequences. More hiding in enclosed spaces. More shushing gestures. Through it all, the viewer’s focus remains unflinching with a tightly held breath. Where sound is the enemy, silence serves a primordial purpose. The softest sound is rendered deafening as a result.

While our eyes respond to the terror of the ghastly creatures, our ears are sneakily manipulated by the sound design.

The mood is set with quite a sensational prologue, which takes us back to the start when a normal day turned into a nightmare. The film opens on the deserted main street of a small town. When we see Lee Abbott (Krasinski) park his car and slam the door, you are perturbed by the noise he’s making. It is a clever smokescreen. The aliens aren’t here yet. The whole town is at the baseball game. Lee too joins his wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) in time to cheer son Marcus (Noah Jupe) on. When a flaming ball appears in the sky, we know what it is. They don’t. When the monsters begin to attack, the town descending into chaos is choreographed with nerve-wracking camerawork. An uninterrupted take follows Evelyn driving through all the panic. Tracking shots follow Lee and Regan into a dive bar, where the iPhone ringtone teaches them the first key to survival.

With Lee gone and their home totalled, the Abbotts look to join other survivors in Part II. Evelyn has put her baby in a box rigged to an oxygen tank to hush its wails. Before they run out of supplies, they run into their old neighbour Emmett (Cillian Murphy), who reluctantly offers them shelter in the steel foundry where he has been holed up. When a radio broadcast leads Regan to believe there is a community of survivors on an island unaffected by the alien invasion, she sets out on her own, despite her mom’s pleas against it. This is where the action splits up in three different directions. Emmett follows Regan to help her find the community. Evelyn goes into town to resupply on oxygen for the baby and meds to treat a wounded Marcus, who stays behind in the foundry. But not only has he accidentally alerted one of the creatures, he has locked himself and his baby brother inside an air-tight vault. As we reach the third act, the cross-cutting stretches the suspense but it comes at the cost of loosening the emotional grip on the audience.

[caption id=“attachment_10037771” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Cillian Murphy in a still from A Quiet Place II[/caption]

A Quiet Place: Part II is not as quiet as Part I. The “Place” expands well beyond the Abbott farm where most of the action unfolded in the original. Confining the family to the farm and focusing on the strained dynamics between a father and daughter gave the first movie emotional heft. Lee’s sacrifice looms large, as the sequel sees the family come to terms with the loss. Regan inherits her father’s resourcefulness and spirit, and Simmonds proves to be the most natural lead. Blunt and Murphy’s characters make for contrasting studies in grief. While Blunt plays a woman who’s lost her husband and must now put on the brave face of two parents for her children, Murphy plays a man who’s lost his whole family and has since surrendered to despair. To an extent where it has distorted his image of mankind. “The people that are left…they’re not worth saving,” he says, defeated, until Regan gives him a reason to hope again.

In Part I, Regan found out the feedback from her hearing aid destabilises the creatures just long enough to cock the shotgun and shoot. Part II adds another chink in the alien’s armour. Combined, we should have a possible WMD to use against the creatures by the next one. Much like the original, the sequel opts for an ending that leaves the door open for a third instalment. A spin-off too has already been greenlit with Jeff Nichols set to direct. When adoptive guardians have started taking over from the progenitors, you know you’re in for a potentially long franchise. The law of diminishing returns has already set in. With the talent involved however, the audience may be game for a couple more before the saturation point sets in too.

A Quiet Place Part II is now available in Indian cinemas.

Rating: ***1/2

Watch the trailer here

Prahlad Srihari is a film and music writer based in Bengaluru.