I really loved ‘A Quiet Place’, ranking it as #6 in my best of the year list in 2018 and scoring it a 9/10. When a sequel was scheduled for release in the early months of 2020, I was excited and had a posse of friends as eager as I was to pick up where the last left off. The trailer for the sequel showed some flashbacks to how the entire story began for the close-knit family the Abbots, about whom the original concerns itself with. These flashbacks gave me some trepidation, mostly due to the fact that the lack of backstory was one of the things I enjoyed about the original, but mostly I was excited.

Then covid hit, and 2020 was a write-off with regards to movies, and my excitement had to be unceremoniously put back on the shelf. Finally, this year, it was released.

Starting, essentially, from the moment the first movie ended, this sequel focuses on the Abbots’ fraught encounters with other survivors of the ‘alien apocalypse’. Before this, however, is the aforementioned flashback scene, where we learn how the alien invasion played out in their small town. This allowed us to see writer/director John Krasinski reprise his role as dearly departed patriarch of the family, Lee. This was, for me, easily the tensest sequence of the film, and so the only way from here is down. Its a shame that the strongest part of the hour and a half runtime is in the first ten minutes, but there we are. For a reason I’m not sure is stated (maybe I missed it?) the family decides to leave the safety of their farmhouse. They run into Emmett (the always great Cillian Murphy) who has survived on his own after losing his family during the invasion. He’s a neighbour from ‘Before’, and so they shelter with him for a time, whilst son Marcus (Noah Jupe) mends from a horrible injury he sustained on the perimeter of Emmett’s hideout. After stumbling onto a radio signal one night, deaf daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) determines its time to find the source of it and use it to tell others how to defeat the aliens (a nifty trick they discovered in the first instalment – feedback from her cochlear implant destabilises them and makes them vulnerable to gunshots).

This decision creates a splintering of the family unit, when she sets off accompanied by a reluctant Emmett whilst mum Evelyn (Emily Blunt) stays home with her newborn baby and the recovering Marcus. There are dangers to be encountered by both pairings, and new threats in the world of the survivors; these encounters and threats make up the rest of the movie.

Well, in all honesty, I was disappointed. For me, this film was a pale and anaemic follow on from a film that felt rich with nuance and care. The thoughtful touches placed throughout the original are pushed aside for some rather obvious set-pieces and scares. The original had me so tense I almost couldn’t stand it, this one barely raised my pulse above a resting rate. The first was was one of the rare horrors that actually made me cry, but this film really made me feel nothing. One of the best things about the original was the lack of ‘stupid choices’; people acted in ways that made sense; but in this one I found myself rolling my eyes at some of the decisions made, seemingly just to move the plot to the next sequence.

I also found it troubling how conservative it felt in the script machinations to create a nuclear family; why was Evelyn not allowed to be ‘head of the family’? Why did they again need a patriarch to make those tough decisions and be a saviour whilst the marginalised mother gets to literally stay home with the baby? That didn’t sit real well with me.

Acting wise, everyone was great as expected, but young Noah Jupe managed to out-act them all. That kid’s gunna be a star!

Perhaps its unfair to compare this to the original as there is no way this could ever feel as fresh due to the audience’s familiarity with the subject; but then that beggars the question – if it had nothing new to say, why make it in the first place? Ultimately, given how tightly woven the two stories/films are, it really is impossible to separate them and review this one without referencing the original. The film itself feels unfinished and superfluous, unable to stand on its own and with no complete story arc, like an awkward middle sibling.

The infuriating ending allows for another sequel but I hope they don’t make it, one cash grab is enough.

What a bummer.

5/10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpdDN9d9Jio