A Quiet Place 2
In a small all-American town, a family gathers with the community to watch their son play baseball. All seems normal until a fiery streak breaks the sky sending everyone heading for cover. In a matter of minutes, horrifying aliens are destroying the town with all the CGI glitz of an epic blockbuster movie. “A Quiet Place 2” opens with all the fine traits that made its prequel a surprise smash hit in 2018. Everything about this opening, promises to be bigger and better than the one before. But that is where the promise ends.
John Krasinski is back in the director’s chair for the sequel still yielding a steady hand with a production that is consistent with fine acting, attention to detail, and genuinely scary jump-scare moments. Emily Blunt is back giving yet another empathetic performance that is open enough to allow viewers to share her horror in trying to protect her children from superpowered creatures who can’t see anything but can hear everything. They are attracted to sound. Watching her struggle to keep two teenagers and a newborn alive in this situation is heartbreaking and empowering at the same time. Her performances have truly been the key to the success of these films. Millicent Simmons, the deaf daughter, also commands the screen as the budding heroine. Her “disability” seems to give her a singular focus which enables her to step out from the rest of the family and problem solve in the most intense crisis. Simmons (who is actually deaf) gives a spot-on performance with never a wasted beat. Noah Jupe returns as the high-strung younger brother, Marcus, and does a capable job expanding his character in a logical and believable way. This is the key to the success of these movies, Krasinski takes the time to develop these characters and casts competent actors to flesh them out. The end results are smart, three-dimensional people who are grounded and lost in a horrifying situation. The audience can’t help but care about them. Put them in a world where tipping over a coffee cup can bring about a cataclysmic catastrophe, and you have the makings of a nail-biter built on the simplest premises.
With all of this being done right, what could go wrong with the movie? It is not so much that the film went wrong as it failed to live up to its potential. “A Quiet Place 2” is an enjoyable movie for those who like suspenseful movies. It is competently made and well-executed. Krasinski is a director to keep an eye on in the future. Where the project goes off course is in its story. The sequel picks up at the exact moment the original leaves off. Forgiving the fact that the kid actors have aged a few years in a matter of seconds, the story adds on to what happened before. However, rather than expanding the world and exploring new elements of the situation, we simply do more of what we did before. We watch our courageous family hide from aliens, suffer terrible wounds, and defeat the bad guys with an amplified cochlear implant. And that’s it. There is little more than was in the first film. Precious new information is revealed, and the plot barely moves. We do learn about (SPOILERS) a community of survivors on an island, but we barely meet them before the movie ends. Forcing you to wait for “A Quiet Place 3” to find out what happens; thus changing this movie into little more than a bridge movie to the third installment of the series. It is like when my son buys a new video game then explains to me that it isn’t a new video game at all. It is just an expansion pack that adds on to a game he already plays. “A Quiet Place 2” feels like an expansion pack for “A Quiet Place”. It doesn’t carry enough story to stand on its own.
Paramount Pictures attacked this project with much greater confidence tripling the budget from the original. It is clear they smell a franchise in the making. Horror films are typically lower budget fare which is why studios love them so much. Because of low production costs, the return on profits is much higher when a horror film hits the mark with audiences. Few examples of that have been more dominant than Krasinksi’s 20 million dollar flick which went on to bring in 341 million dollars at the box office. It was a “no-brainer” for the studio to drop 60 million dollars on this sequel. It also explains why it is coming out now when other studios are still skittish about releasing their big summer movies to theatres. “A Quiet Place 2” doesn’t have to make as much to recoup its expenses as other larger projects and Paramount is looking further down the road to the inevitable third installment. Unfortunately, so were the story writers.
Content Overview
Sexuality – none
Language – The s-word is thrown around a little
Violence – We see people killed by aliens and we see aliens shots at point-blank range. A boy steps into a bear trap. Much more violence is implied than graphically shown.
Objectional Content- None
