Story
This movie is the sequel to the 2018 film A Quiet Place. After the first film’s events, A Quiet Place Part 2 picks up as the Abbott family goes out of their destroyed home after surviving an attack from blind ferocious aliens with an acute sense of hearing. The family departs to find any human communities left while still braving the dangers of the monsters that still roam in their world.
Full thoughts and Review of A Quiet Place Part 2
A Quiet Place Part 2 is the first movie since The Invisible Man I saw in theaters. Funny enough, before the pandemic hit, my friend and I were planning to see this one next. We did, and it only took fifteen months later to watch it in theaters. It also fits since A Quiet Place Part 2 is about a family getting out into a new world, while everyone affecting by the quarantine is starting to get out again and see and rediscover or world and life, minus the hypersensitive hearing aliens. A quiet Place Part 2 was a great movie to come back to, and I enjoyed this as much as I did the first film.
After the first movie’s events, A Quiet Place Part 2 immediately continues where the first film’s story left off, which was acceptable to leave off where the first movie ended. But it doesn’t give newcomers much room to understand what is happening and why we are starting in the story where we are. Of course, I know it’s your fault if you watch out of order, but I do know some people that have seen sequels before the first film in a series. Even with all of that, I understood what was going on, even if the last time I watched A Quiet Place was three years ago.
Marcus was quieter for most of the movie. The reason is the actor’s had a deeper voice as he aged three years since the first film. It’s a good way to keep continuity, but it might be best to do a time jump for the third film.
Without Lee, the Abbott family returns, sacrificing his life to save his kids in the last movie. The story goes from a tale of survival to a forced journey of survival. This storytelling does feel like the proper progression for the story to head. The first film established the world for the audience and teased other families and communities that might be out in the world surviving as well. We did get to go into the world more in A Quiet Place Part 2 and learned how other people are coping and getting by in this nearly silent world.
More focus was on Regan, Evelyn’s deaf daughter, and her story to stop the aliens. After discovering that the aliens are vulnerable to high-frequency audio feedback in the last movie. This weakness, shown in the first film, opened up a vulnerable region behind their armored skin. She gets a plan to stop the aliens after discovering a radio station that may lead to other survivors and a chance to broadcast the high-frequency noise. I don’t think that you can’t get a much more heroic journey than that. But it left a lot of the other characters back to the survival story. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an extraordinary tale of survival, but some of the survival situations the others fall into seemed to be more leading towards pratfall than believable. I also get Evelyn, and Marcus her son, need their story arcs, but this almost risked becoming minor and unnecessary had it not been for excellent writing, storytelling, cross-cutting and acting.
The opening flashback, didn’t need to happen, but it’s shot a great and suspenseful scene.
Cillian Murphy is the newest cast member as Emmett, a former friend of Lee who is distrustful and hardened. At first, after watching the trailer, I had concerns that he would be a replacement to Lee or Lee 2.0. I had a belief that John Krasinski only intended A Quiet Place to be one movie. Due to the financial success of the first film, Paramount wanted this to become a series, and with the patriarch gone, someone else needed to fill that role. Emmett was not Lee, thankfully. He’s a recluse that shuts out the world, and some tragedy occurred to him during the invasion, but he gains a task that makes his character important to the story and journey.
The film does answer, albeit vaguely, the origin of the monsters. I’m not sure if there was a demand that we needed to know that they aren’t from Earth. I was satisfied with the first film’s vagueness, but it gives a sense of origin closure. There is are many questions about the beings that never get answered. The aliens have more screen time and provide great suspenseful moments, but they have another weakness reveal in the movie that makes me wonder; no one else thought of that way to kill them? And how much longer of a threat they will be if they were gaining weakness so quickly.
Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou are two new cast members for A Quiet Place Part 2. Although Dijmon’s role was way shorter than I liked it to be.
A Quiet Place Part 2 has some more action than the last movie. The tension and suspense also stepped up in this film can put you on the edge of your seat. A Quiet Place does do well in cross-cutting the two stories together to provide more tension as you see and feel the problems that these survivors are going through and wonder how they will get themselves out of that situation. My only other issue is the ending. I won’t spoil or give anything away, but it ends, and that’s it. I get that it’s a film series, but it gives a feel of one big movie, broken down into three little films. It does give me the feeling of a Hitchcockian style of ending. In many Hitchcock films, the film ends as soon as the climax in the third act occurs. A Quiet Place Part 2 does this faster than that, as well as the first movie.
The sound is once again fantastic. The film does do a great job with some jump scares that got me in the movie. However, it did lead to me predictable moments like whenever you got a perspective from Regan. The shot of the outside world where get as well. The movie did give me a sense of The Last of Us series because of the landscape, and also, the alien clicking noise reminded me of clickers from the game.
I did want to address about my comment from my article about why the aliens didn’t flail and slash at the noise of running water at river. The film explain it to me where I understood what Lee meant in the first film.
I don’t know where the movie and franchise can go for A Quiet Place 3. I’m hopeful that the third movie goes out more worldwide and the impact these aliens had on the human way of life. I’m also hoping for another alien variant because if they keep weakening the aliens, they won’t be much of a threat to society. I’d still recommend checking this movie out.
Summarized thoughts and review of A Quiet Place Part 2
A Quiet Place Part 2 is a superb sequel to A Quiet Place. Although my biggest problem with the film is that the end is more focused on setting up A Quiet Place Part 3, this shouldn’t stop anyone from liking this movie. A Quiet Place Part 2 has a great story and cast. The tension and suspense are great. Set locations, design, and sound adds an enhancement to the movie’s horror theme. Some stories advanced, but some stay to the first film. Some could see the slow story building dragging the film out, but it works in this case. Hopefully, A Quiet Place series is more established in future movies, and the franchise can build instead of dragging the same story out.
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