A Quiet Place Part II | Little White Lies

A Qui­et Place Part II

18 May 2021 / Released: 28 May 2021

A woman in a floral dress sits in a dimly lit room, holding a small glass bottle.
A woman in a floral dress sits in a dimly lit room, holding a small glass bottle.
3

Anticipation.

A good reason to return to the cinemas for some brash blockbuster hokum.

3

Enjoyment.

Some nice shocks in the mix, but too much of a stale retread of the first film.

2

In Retrospect.

Let down by some laughably contrived screenwriting.

Silence is less than gold­en in this occa­sion­al­ly effec­tive block­buster sequel which trades hor­ror for action.

The sleep­er hit about a world in which hard-soled shoes are a major health risk returns for this sequel, which was post­poned by over a year due to the pan­dem­ic shutdown.

We join the Abbott clan on day one of an inter­galac­tic alien inva­sion in a shim­mer­ing burg of home­spun Amer­i­cana that would make Nor­man Rock­well gag on his pos­tum. The local lit­tle league game is rude­ly inter­rupt­ed by maraud­ing, long-limbed crea­tures who are high­ly sen­si­tive to sound and whose only pur­pose in life is to vio­lent­ly swipe humans off their feet.

The first film, from 2018, saw Eve­lyn (Emi­ly Blunt) and moun­tain man hub­by Lee (John Krasin­s­ki, who direct­ed the orig­i­nal and this new one) hav­ing to embrace the silent life while main­tain­ing a domes­tic utopia in an idyl­lic Appalachi­an backwood.

It all even­tu­al­ly goes south, yet the film worked due to a cou­ple of can­ni­ly mount­ed set pieces and a sim­ple con­cep­tu­al under­pin­ning that didn’t push too hard for wider metaphor­i­cal rel­e­vance. That is to say, you could take its themes of enforced soli­tude and think­ing hard before speak­ing and apply your own meaning.

This sec­ond swing of the bat is most­ly effec­tive pop­corn fare, but where the first episode turned its lim­i­ta­tions into advan­tages, this one comes across like a quick strike while the iron is hot, with ramped up action and few­er if any open­ings for interpretation.

Three people walking in a wooded area, two women and one man, surrounded by green foliage.

The mon­sters them­selves are this time omnipresent, and there’s lit­tle sense of encroach­ing ter­ror, or fear gen­er­at­ed through the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dan­ger rather than its inevitabil­i­ty. It’s almost as if these ghouls are wait­ing just out­side of shot for a pin to drop so they can mount their attack, and the mechan­ics this time seem to entire­ly dis­miss the key to the first film’s suc­cess: that it was the absence that made it scary.

Cil­lian Mur­phy is subbed in as the male lead, keep­ing time as the brood­ing Emmett with base­ball cap peaked over sullen eyes, and whose own dire saga appears to have played out at the same time as the Abbotts’. Daugh­ter Regan (Mil­li­cent Sim­monds) is keen to take over the role of patri­arch and lead the fam­i­ly to safe­ty, and the film teas­es this intrigu­ing notion a few times, only to have Emmett step in and save the day and her return to the role of youth­ful damsel.

It’s a shame, as Sim­monds is the ace that is kept up the film’s sleeve, her expres­sive­ness and charis­ma nudged to the film’s fringes, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its dis­ap­point­ing sec­ond half.

Behind the cam­era, Krasin­s­ki deliv­ers some robust work, par­tic­u­lar­ly the pin-balling pro­logue in which the fam­i­ly make their first encounter with the beast. We get a short form, end-to-end dis­as­ter movie in the first five min­utes, and it’s an ear­ly high­light the film nev­er man­ages to replicate.

Else­where, there’s much rehash­ing of clas­sic action block­buster motifs, such as Ter­mi­na­tor 2’s car chase in which the T‑1000 is hooked to the back of a car, and pret­ty much every­thing involv­ing rap­tors in Juras­sic Park. It’s all fine and dandy, but it’s nev­er great to be cud­gelled by influ­ences and left feel­ing nos­tal­gic for oth­er movies.

At one point, the cam­era tracks low across an aban­doned train sta­tion plat­form, and we see shoes and brief­cas­es piled on the floor. In the con­text of rail trav­el, it’s all a lit­tle near-the-knuck­le, and this half-cocked allu­sion to Holo­caust imagery doesn’t play any fur­ther part in a sto­ry which is focused instead on action, action, action. It trans­lates as a des­per­ate swipe for grav­i­tas, and is only real­ly per­mis­si­ble because the film dis­pens­es entire­ly with humour.

Where things large­ly fal­ter is in Krasinski’s writ­ing, which feels like he had some major assists from the Screen­play-O-Mat­ic 5000. There is so much bla­tant fore­shad­ow­ing in this movie that there’s bare­ly any sun­light. And the par­al­lel sto­ry struc­ture the film adopts goes to occa­sion­al­ly embar­rass­ing lengths to cre­ate syn­chronic­i­ty between its duelling time­lines. Say what you will about Christo­pher Nolan, but he’s much bet­ter at pulling off these wild struc­tur­al pirou­ettes than Krasin­s­ki is here.

We won’t say how it ends as the spoil­er police will have us whacked, but the sud­den arrival of the cred­its pro­voked a roll of the eyes rather than a flut­ter of the heart.

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