Krasinski treats this sequel like a grand and long-anticipated installment in a treasured saga, rather than an agile little follow-up to a surprise blockbuster. There is an air of pretentiousness hanging around these technical flourishes. It’s a clever idea, but one piece of the braid is far less consequential than the other two. There is nothing here that matches the thrilling tension of the grain silo sequence from the first film, though Krasinski tries to up the stakes by intercutting three concurrent suspense scenes, keeping the family bound together even as they’re physically apart. Those doubts about the film’s mythology persist as the story splits off into three threads, the Abbott family separated by various annoying circumstances-well, really one annoying and boggling choice-while a newcomer to their little unit, a neighbor called Emmett ( Cillian Murphy, in fine grizzle), arrives to help them.
The Abbotts needn’t have gone searching for new shelter a couple more weeks of staying put, and they’d probably be fine. Once that was figured out, a solution to the alien scourge probably wouldn’t be far off. Surely someone in the military or government or something would have reached the same, somewhat accidental conclusion that Regan did in the first film: that a particular frequency of sound really messes with the aliens’ gigantic ears/brains. Which makes for a lopsided film, one whose returns ever diminish toward another sudden ending.Ī Quiet Place Part II instead gives us too much time to wonder why this particular world-ending event has been so, well, world-ending.
There are other bursts of that confident verve elsewhere in the film, but none as tight and crisp and scary as that. Krasinksi is good at these kinetic sequences, the cold open in particular placing us palpably in a moment when all hell has broken loose. This ominous prologue is the best the film gets, adeptly balancing cosmic dread with monster action. There’s also an eerie flashback to when the sound-sensitive aliens first came to Earth, a bracing set piece that allows director and writer John Krasinski to appear in the film even though his character, Evelyn’s husband Lee, is dead in the present tense. The inevitable sequel, A Quiet Place Part II (in theaters May 28), picks up very soon after those events, with Evelyn and her three surviving children-baby Abbott and teenagers Regan ( Millicent Simmonds) and Marcus ( Noah Jupe)-leaving their tricked-out farmhouse and seeking out new safety. It was a nervily abrupt way to conclude the film, though of course it was ultimately more setup than style. The first A Quiet Place film-a 2018 box office smash and unexpected awards-season contender-ended with Emily Blunt’s character, determined mom Evelyn, racking a shotgun and preparing for a likely fight to the death against aliens who have invaded Earth.
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