“A Quiet Place” (2018) was a terrific and original horror film. This sequel was scheduled to be released last year, but COVID struck, so the release was delayed up until now. Some movie theaters are open now and your humble scribe and his wife went to our first movie since March 2020! It felt great to finally be watching a movie on the big screen again. Since this is a horror movie, I thought this would be a good first choice, since the film wouldn’t work well on my home TV. In this movie, sound also plays a major role, so watching it in a theater is much better for the soundtrack, too.
The film begins on the first day of the alien invasion. The Abbott family is at a Little League game when something weird happens in the sky. Everybody there is frightened and the rest of the game is cancelled. Soon, the alien/monsters start attacking and killing many residents of the small town. (This is the first time we get a good look at the aliens who seem to be a hybrid between the “Alien” and a Gigantic Nuclear Mutant Lobster!) They can move even faster than a cheetah, so you can’t out run them. The Abbotts barely escape with their lives!
The next scene starts immediately after where the first movie ends. Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) is holding the shotgun she used to kill one of the aliens. Her husband Lee (John Krasinski) is lying dead in the fields. (He had sacrificed himself to save the rest of his family.) Evelyn, her son Marcus (Noah Jupe), her baby, and her nearly-deaf daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) then leave their home in search of some help, food, and other supplies. They have learned that the aliens are vulnerable to a loud, piercing sound made by Regan’s cochlear implant. (The aliens freak out at this sound, cease attacking, and are stationary enough for a human to get a good shot off. Bullets, however, don’t phase them unless you shoot them in the head. That seems to be the only way to kill them.)
The family links up with Emmett (Cillian Murphy), a friend of Lee’s who is barely managing to survive and doesn’t want to help them. Seemingly a heartless coward, he insists that they leave the following morning. Regan, however, has a plan to get help by meeting up with other survivors. She thinks she knows where they are and stealthily leaves in the middle of the night without notifying Evelyn, who would have vetoed the idea. Upon awakening, Evelyn pleads with Emmett to find Regan and bring her back, but will he risk his life to do so? I won’t say any more about the plot, but the film has a nice balance between character development and scary scenes.
The aliens must be at least as smart as humans, since they are capable of interplanetary travel. Nevertheless, they are blind, are rather clumsy, and – worst of all – they have abominable manners, so I couldn’t fathom how they could have achieved such an advanced civilization. (Perhaps, in a future sequel, we can learn their backstory.) A nagging question for me is, do they have a sensitive side?
The original film’s theme was about what one might sacrifice for his family, while this one explores what one might risk to help others.
The film isn’t as good as the original, but it’s still darn good. Krasinski (Writer/Director) has set things up for at least one more film, and I plan to see that one too.
The movie theaters are opening! “Let’s Make Some Noise” for “A Quiet Place Part II”!
