A Quiet Place, Part II (2021)

To be honest, I thought A Quiet Place was one of those movies that didn’t need a sequel. It was fairly perfect and did a wonderful job using visual storytelling and focused on only four characters going through separate but similar toils. And I’m not against sequels; most of my favourite films are sequels, but there are more instances where the sequel fails to capture the magic of the original. Thankfully, this film does not fall into this trap.

The Abbott family returns, with Emily Blunt as Evelyn, Millicent Simmonds as Regan, Noah Jupe as Marcus, and even John Krasinski as Lee, reprising their roles. But this time, we also get newcomer and outsider Cillian Murphy playing Emmett, an old friend of the Abbotts and Djimon Hounson as a Man on Island. Everyone in this cast does a perfect job with their portrayals, and properly convey their emotions on the journey through this film.

Rather than staying in one central location and essentially keeping it the same movie, the Abbotts leave their house from the first one, with the knowledge that the alien invaders (the initial invasion shown as a prologue) can be killed by microphone feedback. Upon arriving at an old factory, they inadvertently make a noise that alerts the aliens to them. Racing through the yard, Marcus runs into a bear trap, letting out a blood curdling scream. Honestly, this was the most terrifying moment in the film. Emmett, watching with a sniper rifle, witnesses them kill the approaching alien and takes them into cover.

There, we get the main set-piece of Marcus’ story: the bunker. Emmett has converted the space next to it into a little makeshift home, where he can speak so long as the aliens aren’t directly above, but the bunker can only be opened from the outside, so Emmett makes sure that they can get out before suffocating by attaching a towel to block the lock.

After hearing a nearby radio playing “Beyond the Sea,” Regan discovers that an island is transmitting the song, and makes a plan to get there and create the feedback loop to neutralize and kill the aliens. Marcus, afraid for his safety, doesn’t want to go, so she sneaks out whle everyone is asleep. Evelyn, wanting to stay focused on the newborn baby, asks Emmett to find Regan and bring her back.

When he finds her, Regan convinces him to help her travel to the island for her plan, and the two set off. Since Emmett didn’t live with Regan, pre-apocalypse, he doesn’t really understand ASL, and their interactions work wonderfully because of this. The few symbols that he does know (“dive”) help them out when they’re attacked by feral humans in a harbour, and they get onto a boat to an island Haven, unwittingly taking one of the aliens with them, despite learning that the aliens cannot swim.

Meanwhile, Evelyn returns to the farm to grab some oxygen tanks for the baby’s sound-proof box, as their current tank is almost empty. Marcus is left alone with the baby and explores the foundry. He comes across Emmett’s wife (having died from disease several months earlier) and makes a lot of noise due to being startled. An alien finds them and attacks. In his haste, Marcus accidentally locks himself and the baby in the bunker, with almost no oxygen.

Evelyn returns with two oxygen tanks and blows one up to set off the sprinkler system, which distracts the alien long enough for her to rescue Marcus and the baby, who almost die due to asphyxiation.

On the Haven Island, Regan and Emmett meet a man (Hounson) who takes them to the broadcasting tower when the alien attacks. There, Regan and Emmett work together to get the signal up. In a brilliant parallel to each other, Regan takes a metal bar and kills the alien, while Marcus, using the radio to incapacitate the alien attacking him, shoots the alien. The movie ends with both children standing over their respective aliens, victorious.

Though I didn’t think this sequel needed to exist, now that I’ve seen it, I can realize the brilliance of it:

The thing I love about this movie is the simplicity of the plot. While I’m sure that I’ve had complaints with lazy plots in the past, I must give praise where praise is due. Complex does not equal better. This film balances two distinct character plots: Regan and Marcus. While I thought Evelyn was sidelined in this one, especially after losing her husband, and having given birth in the best horror scene ever made, it took a couple of days for me to realize that this isn’t her movie. In all honesty, this isn’t her franchise: it’s the kids.

Marcus has a more obvious growth in the film but lacks any real agency, as he spends most of it running and/or hiding. This is carried over from the first film, which was more about Regan and Evelyn, and starts to come to a finale in this one. In the first one, he was so scared of the aliens that he wouldn’t scream near a waterfall, but in the context of the film, that was only a couple of days ago. By the end of this film, he’s bravely risking his own life by saving his baby sibling, and then shooting the alien.

Regan, on the other hand, has a less distinct arc, but is given much more agency. Her determination kept me engaged throughout the whole film and seeing how she interacts with Emmett was fun. She gets him to calm down about communication, looks to him for help and guidance, but is the real hero of the film.

In the first one, Regan and Marcus were mostly played as scared kids, something that Lee needed to save and sacrifice himself for. This time, it’s all about overcoming their fear and guilt. Having watched their father die saving them clearly left an impact and I think this movie is about them coming to terms with that. Evelyn has a nice little scene where she leaves her ring on the grave of her third child (the one that died in the opening minutes of the first film), but she’s an adult and more logical than they are, so she’ll know how to handle it better.

Regan, having spent the majority of the first film believing that her father hated her for causing the death of their other child, learned that her father loved her unconditionally and now wants to give his death some meaning. She wants to honour his spirit, soldier on, and help people, just like he did.

Marcus, however, is made worse by his father’s death. He outright says that helping people is what got his dad killed, but in the end, he realizes that sitting around and doing nothing is not a productive use of time.

Surprisingly, this kind of makes the current duology a coming-of-age story, with the theme being a play on the idea of bravery. The notion of bravery is that it’s so often confused with looking for a fight when that’s not what it means at all. I believe that this film posits that bravery is fighting on in the face of being afraid and rising to the challenge of survival. Basically, it’s about not letting fear get the better of you in adversity. Regan, being deaf, excellently exemplifies this by working towards a goal, despite the fear that she exhibits for the aliens. But there’s a deeper fear there: fear that she’ll fail her father. Marcus, of course, has to learn to be brave and overcome his fear.

The other characters do fit nicely into this theme, too. Evelyn risks her life to ensure that her children will survive. Emmett starts out like Marcus, hiding in fear, but becomes a fighter being near Regan. Even Hounson remarks that on the island, they don’t have to be afraid. It’s a nice change of pace to see the children in the film influence change in the adults, but not in a lame “you old people don’t understand” cliché, and it’s even more impressive that this happens in a horror film.

As with the first one, the film uses visual storytelling to great effect, and cuts unnecessary lines of dialogue. After realizing that the aliens can’t swim, there’s no real line that draws attention to that epiphany; it’s all just Cillian’s reaction. When Evelyn sees the sprinkler in the factory, she doesn’t say a word, and sets everything up to trick the alien into coming up to her and being blinded by the down pour. When the oxygen is running out, there no line that says “this baby will die if the oxygen runs out,” which means that the film trusts it’s audience to connect the dots.

The sound editing is amazing, too. With a premise like “aliens will kill you if you make a noise,” you’d expect it to be very dull to listen to. As with the first one, every sound is amplified so you really feel the weight of their world. The soundtrack and score is phenomenal, though. Regan waking up without her implant is accompanied by a subtle track and massively muffled background noises, but when she gets it back, everything becomes clearer. There are several instances in the film where they cut between this audio technique and regular audio, as it switches from Regan’s perspective to those around her. It’s a fun way to keep an audience engaged on an auditory level.

The acting is great from everyone in the cast. I really appreciate the little glances and subtle expressions that make up the majority of their dynamic, but everyone gets good moments where they get to shine. Evelyn gets a great emotional moment where she effectively says goodbye to Lee; Regan, realizing that she doesn’t have her implant and the scene on the train, are great examples of fear; Emmett has great reaction shots, like the aforementioned aliens can’t swim, or the preceding feral humans attack scene. But, by far, the best moment of acting is when Marcus is screaming his head off after getting snatched by the bear trap. I was so afraid for the child during that sequence.

The only part of the film that I thought needed some work was the idea that “humans have become depraved.” Emmett mentions this early in the film, but the only scene where we see it come true is in the harbour and it wasn’t that depraved to me. Additionally, because we didn’t recognize any of the people in this scene, there wasn’t a clear before and after effect that illustrated his point. Though this idea needed some work (but may come to greater fruition in the conclusionary third movie), I am grateful that it didn’t go farther than it did, because I’m sick of seeing the “humanity sucks” storyline in apocalypse stories.

This film doesn’t quiet hold up to the first one, but it does not miss that mark by much. It’s still an engaging story, told mostly through visuals, with a terrifying set up, and wonderful character moments, accompanied by great acting, and enhanced by a universal theme. I didn’t think that this movie needed to be made, but after seeing how good it is, I can’t wait for the inevitable conclusion to the trilogy.