A Quiet Place Part II (2021) - Proves Silence Is Still Terrifying - REVIEW

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A Quiet Place Part II opens with one of the best first sequences I have seen in a horror sequel, let me be specific here "sequel" and it basically dares you to say the original did not need a follow up but for the most part it does feel like they did a single movie and split it in two, because that opening alone justifies tells you this, there refrences, the characters, everything about it. You get thrown back to Day One, clever how they mane the last one "Day One", when it all started, when all fell apart, and it is so well executed because it gives you that raw panic nobody saw in the first movie. John Krasinski is back as Lee and we see him walking into a small town general store to grab snacks and right there on the store TV there is a news report talking about some massive disaster and it just kind of washes over everyone in that store like background noise, like we all do most of the time never paying enough attention because who would think that thing overseas is about to land in your backyard in twenty minutes. There is also this small moment where Lee walks past a toy spaceship that feels oddly familiar and then it hits you, because that thing is identical to the one that got his youngest son killed in the first movie and just like that this layer of dread settles over a scene that looks ordinary, honestly I was not expecting things to get ugle this fast. Lee heads over to the baseball game where Marcus is playing and you see Emmett there in the crowd, the whole town hanging out together having a normal afternoon, right up until the sky just breaks open and these monsters start ripping through everything. The production quality on that opening sequence is right where it should be, nothing over the top, CGI looks just on point, watching people run for their lives while these creatures tear through police cars and buildings, seeing Lee sprint to protect his daughter while chaos erupts around him, it answers every question about where these things even came from and confirms they fell straight out of space. What I love most about that opening is how it builds terror without throwing cheap scare tactics at you every five seconds, it just lets the nightmare unfold and trusts you to feel it.

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8332922/
• Platform: PRIME VIDEO

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Jumping to the present the story picks up right after the first movie, with the surviving family leaving their damaged and very unsafe farm at this poing, it was rare and disapointing there were not more monsters around either looking for them or dead because on the first movie it shows them cranking the volume and Emily loading the shut gun like they were going to massively kill some monsters. They grab their stuff and start walking these train tracks and you feel the dread building while they basically go into enemy territory unknown for them, the silence just pressing down on everything. The tension goes completely through the roof when Evelyn step on a trip line that sends empty glass bottles crashing everywhere and forces them into a spring no matter if there are or not any monsters around because they already know whats comming, and if that was not bad enough Marcus steps directly into a bear trap and screams his lungs out like nothing else matters, I really thought he was going to pass out from the pain. I am not gonna sugarcoat it, that sequence is one of the most stressful things you can imagine going through such situation, because you know the sound is a death sentence and this kid is literally trapped and screaming, and Evelyn has to shove her newborn into an oxygen box just to so he cant be heard while she try to open the metal jaws off Marcus. A monster spot them, Regan uses her hearing aid feedback to drop it, Evelyn puts a shotgun shell through its head, and the whole thing happens so fast you barely have time to process if all this makes any sense, they had some inconcistencies through the movie but not on this scenes, was just perfect. That entire sequence is the best out of the entire movie, turning one simple stumble into a full life or death sentence in about ninety seconds and it never once feels fake or manufactured. The creature design is top notch, the sound design is incredible and Emily Blunt carries so much damn desperation from a mother protecting her kids in that situation, she is just fantastic in this, no wonder some people think she deserve and award for this two movies.

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Comparing this to the original it is pretty obvious the goal was to expand the world but the more they expand it the more you start to miss what made the first one so special. Regan figures out that a repeated broadcast of the song Beyond the Sea is actually a coded signal pointing survivors toward an island, although it makes no sense of why not actually telling people to get on a boat?? was this intentional to keep the population low or keep those other crazy people away?. Emmett goes after Regan and ends up sticking around to help, watching those two move through the landscape together reminded me a lot of Joel and Ellie from The Last of Us and a lot of the golden days of The Walking Dead, that same kind of reluctant guardian and determined young woman energy, walking through overgrown everything and Cillian Murphy is really good here because Emmett is not some warm mentor type, he is just a guy who has barely kept himself alive and resents being pulled back into caring about other people, I mean he throw them away the very first day even with the baby, this guy has been through some traumatic moments. They reach a marina where they get ambushed by this savage group of people living on the docks and there is this deeply disturbing setup with a small girl who has a rope around her neck being used as bait to lure in travelers, I bet they saw Regan and Emmett coming from a mile way to be so damn prepared. Emmett signs Regan to dive, she does and Emmett creates enough chaos and distraction to draw the creatures into the marina, where the group of people who ambush them gets torn apart and one creature sinks after hitting the water, basically the aja moment confirming these things can't swim at all. I got to put this sequence in second place because it gave us something to feel distant from the family drama and create this momentarly side quest, but the dock people subplot raises a hundred questions the movie has zero interest in answering, why don't they create a TV series out of this movies? or is it that others like TWD or TLOU front run them?. The first movie was brilliant because it kept everything on one farm and made every floor board feel like a death sentence, here they keep opening the world up and some of it lands and some of it just feels like a generic survival show instead of the unique monster experience that made the original so damn good.

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Now before I end this post I would like to put out some stuff that annoyed me a bit, because there are some choices in the middle section that just feel lazy. After the bear trap disaster a figure watching them through a gun sight pulls them into an abandoned warehouse and it turns out to be Emmett, who we saw at the baseball game. He hides the family inside this huge airtight metal boiler, explains that he lost his kids on Day One and that his wife Nora got sick and her pain made her scream until he had to bring her somewhere so the monsters couldnt hear them and it is sad backstory that explains why this guy is barely holding it together. But then the movie starts making the characters do dumb things just to keep the plot moving, like how is Marcus walking so fast? the oxygen tank problem? Evelyn going out at night? like wth is wrong with this people, this is survival fuck up 101, that is where my patience ran out. Evelyn leaves an injured Marcus completely alone to watch a newborn while she goes scavenging for medical supplies, which is already enough risk but then Marcus does something that made me want to smack the sht out of him. He knows what is out there, he has lived through all of it but he decides to wander around the dark warehouse by himself and ends up stumbling on the rotting body, gets spooked, causes a massive amount of noise and draws a monster right to where the baby is sleeping. It is the exact kind of horror movie writing that makes me crazy, its like the writers are like damn I got the ending and its good but we need something to patch before the ending. Its insane for a character who has survived this long suddenly forgets every survival instinct they have just so the script can manufacture a rescue scene. You sit there watching and going come on man, come on, because it dumbs down all the smart decisions this family made in the first movie and just throws their whole logic out the window, the only excuse is that they are still kids.

Not as good as the first one but very close so I gave this one a 7/10 because even with all the frustrating choices it still delivers an intense experience from start to finish. Emmett and Regan eventually make it to the island colony and seeing people having a barbecue with electricity running and kids actually running around is almost shocking after everything, it gives you this brief moment of hope that people actually figured it out but you know something has to go wrong before it all can clear out. They meet a man played by Djimon Hounsou who explains that once the government realized the creatures could not swim the National Guard started sending people out on boats and the island is proof that it worked for at least some of them, its a shame they gave Djimon so little screen time, I'm going to watch the third one again tonight because I'm wondering if he has anything to do with it. That peace does not last long though, because a creature reaches the island on a boat that had drifted away from the marina, its weird because they are not intelligent so how did the creature remain on the boat avoiding drawning. If you have seen enough movies you already knew the whole thing erupts into chaos again with the creature tearing through the colony people. The movie cuts back and forth between the island attack and what is happening back at the warehouse with Marcus and the way John Krasinski balances both attacks simultaneously feels really good as you getting more and more tension from multiple angles, keeping both situations feeling urgent and not makine one more important than the other. My biggest complaint is the ending, because it cuts to black right at the exact moment you feel like a massive final act is about to begin and it feels less like a conclusion and more like they chopped the movie in half to guarantee a third movie, well would be a forth becaue "Day One" is not a continuation but another perspective, which is a pretty cheap move when you think about it considering the cliffhanger from the first one. This two movies back to back are awesome, watch them with headphones and loud, watch it in the dark, and maybe do not eat anything crunchy to keep perfect silence, because silence in this movie is still the scariest thing going.

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