A Quiet Place Part II (2020) Director: John Krasinski

“The People That Are Left, They’re Not The Kind Of People Worth Saving.”

Replete with flashbacks to the first day the aliens invaded earth (and the mass hysteria that ensued), A Quiet Place II picks up right where the original narrative in the first film left off. This time entirely written and directed by John Krasinski (he co-wrote the first film with , Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) leads her three children (the two elder children are reprised by Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe) away from their refuge farmhouse and across remote treacherous terrain, careful to remain entirely silent so as not to draw attention from the violent, human-hunting aliens who are blind but in possession of ultrasonic hearing. Danger lurks around every corner.

They wander quietly through the American woodlands and follow derelict train tracks until stumbling upon an old abandoned steel foundry, terrified of making any noise along the way. Here, they accidentally meet an old family friend named Emmett (Cillian Murphy), who is hiding out now that his whole family has died. Can he be trusted? He is a mysterious loner, yet he is jaded by the state of the world, distrustful of other human beings –he has seen too many horrible people undeserving of help in this new perilous world. As time passes, he rediscovers his sense of heroism and self-sacrifice for others as he and Regan locate a boat and escape across the bay (we learn that the creatures cannot swim when they drown in the water). Regan tests her theory in the first film by blasting ringing feedback from her cochlear implant through a microphone from a radio station. It causes the aliens to be temporarily impaired, just long enough for the children to attack –both Regan in a radio station and her brother Marcus in the foundry.

The idea of noise is masterfully put to use in both Part II as well in Part I, especially when we (the audience) are placed inside the silent, deaf perspective of Regan Abbott. It leaves an eerie sense of dread throughout the story at particularly ominous moments. Needless to say, I thought both A Quiet Place movies stand apart as terrific examples of what modern horror can achieve. They are not subsumed in spectacle by becoming mere monster films, instead they are focused on telling an intriguing narrative, albeit one that is white-knuckingly intense. If modern Hollywood seems to be wholly unable to produce comedy films these days, at least the horror genre has been going through something of a renaissance in recent years, especially with films A Quiet Place Parts I and II, Susanne’s Bier’s Birdbox, and the myriad A24 films like Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar, and Robert Eggers’s The Witch. Apparently, there are rumors of future iterations of A Quiet Place in the works. Either way, if John Krasinski continues to direct, I’m sure these films will continue to impress.