A Quiet Place didn’t need a sequel, but I sure am glad it got one.
The perfect sequel, as I once read, does three things: It ups the stakes, expands the world, and sends the characters in a forward direction, allowing them to grow. A Quiet Place, Part II feels like a logical sequel, continuing the story we didn’t even know needed to be continued.
Picking up immediately after the first movie, even though Marcus hit an amazing growth spurt in the few minutes in between, A Quiet Place, Part II follows what remains of the Abbott family as they are forced to leave their farm and venture out to find help. It’s on this quest that they run into an old neighbor, Emmett, who reluctantly joins the hearing impaired Regan on a quest to possibly, maybe stop the monsters that attack if you make the slightest sound.
This is a magnificent sequel. Perhaps not as claustrophobic as the first and without the novelty, but it takes the story it was given and runs with it into new territory without retreading any old ground. Rather than a pointless cash grab, this is a movie crafted with care, giving us just enough in the first few minutes to remind us of what happened, from an extended flashback to nonchalantly moving past objects that represented important plot points in the first movie from the dead aliens in the basement to a hole in the silo to that godforsaken nail on the stairs.
From there, it’s all new and all different. This time, instead of the family staying together, they go their seperate ways, each one confronting a danger new and horrible. The suspense is outstanding, the silence is deafening, and the creatures, though shown in all of their glory in the daylight, are a thing of terror.
It seems like I’ve been referencing Poltergeist a lot lately, but this is another horror movie series that follows the Poltergeist formula: Make the audience fall in love with a family and then torture them for 90 minutes. Given the events of the first movie, it’s a large possibility that any member of the Abbott clan could be picked off at any minute – yes, even the baby – and that danger pervades every single second of this film. There is an intensity, like a rubber band pulled taught that just never seems to go away and, when you think that characters have found safety, the film gleefully pulls that rug out from under you.
This is one of those rare sequels that more than lives up to the original. If you loved A Quiet Place, you will love this movie as well. It’s a sequel that we didn’t want, but we didn’t know we needed and, when it’s all said an done, it leaves you with the feeling that you want to see even more. John Krasinski is a hell of a director and I want to see more from him.
And, if there is A Quiet Place III, I will be there in the theater, watching in terrified silence.
Jason Gaston 