YNOT at the Movies

The scary coronavirus has haunted us for more than a year by now. Covid-19 also keeps us away from being scared, in a good way, by the director John Krasinski's highly anticipated "A Quiet Place Part II" (USA 2020 | 97 min.). This film was supposed to be in theaters in March last year, right at the beginning of the lockdown, and was shelved for more than a year. Now finally we can go back to theaters where the big screen offers the only way to fully enjoy the thrill this terrifying movie delivers. Even though this sequel is less suspenseful than the incredibly original and spine-chilling "A Quiet Place" (USA 2018), you will still be so frightened that you almost wish the movie would be over soon.

To remind us why the world is in an apocalyptic stage, the film starts on Day 1, when the whole nightmare begins. At a baseball game, Lee Abbott (John Krasinski) and his wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt) are enjoying their family time with their three children. Despite the lively baseball field, the eerily quiet main street resembles the scenes during the Covid-19 lockdown, indicating something bad is going to happen. Sure enough, when a fireball comes down from the sky, so do the monstrous-looking creatures with giant claws that we were already familiar with from the first film. Although these aliens are blind, they hunt with their incredibly sensitive hearing. Once they hear their targets, they can destroy just about everything in their path with extraordinary force.

Fast-forward to Day 474 since the alien invasion, Lee is gone, so is Evelyn's younger son. With a newborn baby in her arm, Evelyn and her deaf daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and son Marcus (Noah Jupe) tiptoe quietly searching for a refuge. When they meet an old friend Emmett (Cillian Murphy), they seek his help and take shelter in his bunker inside an abandoned steel mill. But by no means is that a long term solution. With incredible bravery and intelligence, Regan splits with the family and takes a journey on her own to search for a better location for her family to survive. Meanwhile, Evelyn and Marcus must take care of the newborn while waiting for Emmett to bring back Regan.

As in the first movie, silence is both the key to survival and the timer for terror. You know horrible things will come while you are holding your breath, and they surely come. The film doesn't shy away from deploying jump scares, yet, no matter how well you are mentally prepared, the trick pulls off effectively. You can imagine what it's like when you cannot see where the monsters are while you have to walk without any noise among decomposed corpses. After coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Abbott family's isolation and paranoia can particularly resonate with the viewers.

Compared to its predecessor, this sequel's plot is less convincing and some parts of the film fall into the pattern of a typical zombie movie. The characters should have spoken less as they did in the previous film, not only to avoid drawing deadly attention from the monsters, but also to stay away from saying some bad lines. For example, it doesn't make sense when Evelyn asks Emmett to search for Regan: "You must bring her back to me." That makes it sound like Evelyn has the ability to offer a safer harbor and Emmett has an obligation to do what she asks. The truth can not be any more different.

What are these terrifying creatures that are turning civilization into an apocalyptic ruin? You will have to wait for the next installment. Maybe you can get an answer, or maybe not.

"A Quiet Place Part II" opens on Friday, May 28, 2021.