Because I really, really liked the first one, I had been wishing and waiting to see the second installment of "A Quiet Place," a horror story about blind aliens with a keen sense of hearing who take over our planet. This sequel was supposed to come out in theatres last year, but then a real life horror story came out – the Pandemic. And if you read my review of the first one, there is an eerie prescience about living life during a horror story. Anyway, when the film was finally released into theatres this year, I wasn’t keen on sitting in a theatre anymore so was happy when the DVD came out but, now I am saying to myself, "Be careful what you wish for."
And I should have known better, because you know how I feel about sequels. I will get to that in a bit.
First, let me get you caught up. Oh, wait, the sequel does it for you. It spends 12 minutes of a 97 minute movie
showing you what happened in the first one, possibly helpful if you didn’t see
the first one, confusing for those of us who did see the first one because we
see a character who had died in the first one. We think, “Huh?” It’s also a questionable choice to spend 12
minutes of a 97 minute movie in a recap since it leaves little time left to expand the new story.
Was the recap really needed? I understand the desire to make this sequel a stand alone film so giving the newbies a heads up might be helpful in that regard but those 12 minutes wouldn't really help those who hadn't seen the first one and just confused those of us who did. I also wonder why someone would want to see a sequel without seeing the first one anyway, so may I recommend that you see the first one? Like I said, the first one was really, really good.
Anyway, in the interests of this review, I will give you a quick
update and I promise it won’t take 12 minutes. The planet has been invaded by
some scary, spidery aliens who can’t see but are sensitive to sound, so to avoid
getting torn apart, everyone must be very, very quiet. That’s basically it.
Part I focused on the Abbott family, Evelyn (Emily Blunt), Lee (John Krasinski, Blunt's real-life husband) and their
children Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and Marcus (Noah Jupe) and a newborn baby that was born in the first one (can
you imagine – she had to give birth in silence)! Regan is a particularly interesting
character in light of the keen sense of hearing that the aliens have. She is deaf (Simmonds is also deaf in real life). At the end of Part I, Evelyn had
figured out how to blow the heads off the aliens with a shotgun, but we were
pretty much left up in the air about what was going to happen to them all, hence this sequel.
So now in Part II, what’s
left of the Abbot family is living with the reality of these alien creatures. It’s their New Normal (where have I heard
that before)? As long as they are quiet,
they can mostly avoid them. There is no
childbirth scene in this one, but Marcus gets his leg caught in a bear
trap, so kind of the same thing. Again, difficult to keep quiet. The family meets up with old friend, Emmett (Cillian Murphy), who isn’t so friendly now, but who reluctantly
allows them to share his bunker. When they hear a mysterious signal coming from
their radio transmitter, Emmett and Regan head off to try to find where it’s coming from.
The first film was a tantalizing idea for a sci-fi horror film...
Space aliens with impeccable hearing. Kind of reminded me of my mother. Her hearing was so good that when she was down in the basement ironing, she could hear my brother and me whispering about her on the second floor. “I heard that,” she’d yell. It was our own little horror story.
Anyway, sadly, this sequel is just more of
the same – a lot of running around, a lot of shushing and many shotgun blasts
to the heads of these unattractive aliens. Written and directed by John Kasinski, this time around, the film focuses less on
Blunt and more on Murphy and Simmonds.
The acting is good and we are given some closure on what happens to the
family, but that really could have been done in the first one.
Did we need this sequel? Not really. Was I disappointed? Yes, because I will say once again, I really, really liked the first one. Is this the end? Probably not.
If this sequel makes money,
it’s all about ka-ching. There will be
yet another installment. And, that my friends, is the problem with sequels. A movie starts out as a good idea. It makes a lot of money and
then that good idea gets run into the ground until we have forgotten what was
good about the first one. If you have a
hit movie, why not bask in the glory?
Don’t sully that first movie with an inferior one just to profit from
the popularity of the first one. The
only movie series I can name where the sequels were as good or even perhaps better than the
original was “The Godfather.”
Rosy the Reviewer says…though there was a certain amount of closure here, it seems to me the door has been left open for a third installment. Please, god, no.
(Available on DVD from Netflix or for rent or purchase On Demand or from Amazon)