A Quiet Place Part II Movie Review: An engaging sequel that’s as taut as first part

A Quiet Place (2018) dropped us right in the middle of a post-apocalyptic world, where Lee Abbot (John Krasinski) does everything he can to keep his wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt), his deaf daughter, Regan (Millicent Simmonds), and son, Marcus (Noah Jupe), safe from the blind extraterrestrial predators that are hypersensitive to sound. John Krasinski, also the director, divulged only a little background information about the monsters, the people, and what had happened. And that’s exactly why that film turned out to be an engrossing watch. We explored the remnants of the apocalypse with the Abbot family, who knew more about this treacherous world than we did.

Director: John Krasinski

Cast: Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, John Krasinski

In a brief, brilliant prologue of this sequel, the tables are turned. The people are shown going about their business with no idea of what is to come, but we know. There’s tension with every passing second, and we want to scream at the locals to take cover. This time around, we do get to see where the monsters are actually coming from. Like the director, the monsters waste no time in getting down to business. This sequence also has another objective, the introduction of Emmett (Cillian Murphy), a friend of Lee.

The film then cuts back to the present, to the same moment where the first part left us. In the present, we see Emmett as a hopeless survivor, who is hardened by the death of his entire family. The Abbotts run into Emmett on their journey to find other survivors. Both Abbots and Emmett are eaten by grief, but it is interesting to see how differently it manifests. Emmett turns out to be a guilt-stricken cynic, while Regan, taking after her deceased father, wants to fight against this formidable threat. While the first part was entirely about the personal battle of a family, the scope of the sequel goes beyond it. It is not just about survival anymore. It is time to fight back.

As Regan keeps hearing a ‘Beyond the Sea’ song broadcast on a radio channel, she suspects it's a signal from fellow survivors on an island. She wants to use her cochlear implant and broadcast the high-frequency noise through the radio tower to give all the survivors a fighting chance. It's now up to Emmett to let go of pessimism and help Regan.

It's fascinating to see how both the parts don’t care much about what’s outside of their narratives. For example, we do get a glimpse of a set of feral humans in the sequel, who are as scary as the monsters (even if not in appearance), but this film doesn’t delve into it too much. In a sense, this minimalism reminded me of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road (2006), that was later adapted into a 2009 film of the same name. However, A Quiet Place Part II isn’t as ambiguous, and it doesn’t take as much time pondering the psyche or the impact of the catastrophe on human nature. It priotises genre pleasures above everything, with its prime focus being on entertaining you, and boy, does it deliver on that front.