When John Krasinski's A Quiet Place dropped in 2018, felt like such a specifically thrilling flash of lightning caught in a bottle that the quickly-announced sequel seemed like putting a hat on a hat. After all, so much of A Quiet Place's power comes from its concept, a world overrun with violent extraterrestrials with hearing so super-sensitive that any survivors must live in complete silence. That film remains a singular horror movie theater experience, turning every bozo crinkling their Skittles wrapper into the side-eye enemy of every other terrified moviegoer. So the worry, for me, was that A Quiet Place Part II would operate mostly by doubling down on the gimmick, like "everything is quiet...again!" Instead, A Quiet Place Part II just gave me a shockingly gigantic boost in confidence when it comes to Krasinski as a filmmaker. Directing once again as well as taking over script duties, the former Office star is—very quietly, of course—building a Steven Spielberg-esque survival story here with a sequel that both expands the world and digs deeper into the personal heart at its center. Doubters, like me, are quieted.
After an extended prologue that borrows lovingly in terms of impeccably staged chaos from Spielberg's War of the Worlds, A Quiet Place Part II picks up almost immediately after the events of the first film. The Abbott family—Evelyn (Emily Blunt), Regan (Millicent Simmonds), and Marcus (Noah Jupe)—departs their destroyed farmhouse, now carrying the knowledge that the right combination of hearing-aid-and-speaker debilitates the monsters, as well as a newborn baby that occasionally needs to be strapped to an oxygen tank to keep from crying. Not five miles from their former home, the Abbotts encounter two game-changing things: 1) Emmett (Cillian Murphy), a family friend living in devastated isolation after the loss of his family, and 2) A radio single, broadcasting a loop of the song "Beyond the Sea," which Regan translates as a sign from an isolated—and safe—island community. The film then primarily splits into two paths; Regan and Emmett hit the road to find a boat while Evelyn and Marcus stay behind to tend to the dangerously loud baby.
One of the larger successes of the sequel is in the way it expands its palate of scares. The quiet stuff is still there, and anyone looking to full-body clench as someone comes this close to knocking over a loud object will be satisfied. But Part II makes more intimate use of its monsters; it's much more of an out-and-out creature feature than its predecessor. Where the horror of A Quiet Place originated in the silent unknown—in the fear of the monster's possible arrival—Part II revels in their presence. Not to keep making Spielberg comparisons, but A Quiet Place Part II often feels like a full-length adaptation of the raptors in the kitchen scene from Jurassic Park, building its tension from the idea that a single sheet of glass separates you from an alpha predator's maw. Not just in the atmosphere of the set-pieces, but down to the actual blocking, which is meticulous without being too showy.
Which isn't to say the humans aren't still the star of the show, and what Krasinski gets out of its young stars is kind of remarkable. It's an unfortunate truth that any film—and more often than not any horror film—can be sunk by a misplaced kid casting, but Simmonds and Jupe carry so much of A Quiet Place Part II's emotional heft. Blunt is a powerhouse as always, and Murphy manages to display his character's profound loss more with a word unsaid than any line of dialogue. But the film belongs to Simmonds and Jupe, their arcs toward accepting their father's sacrifice—and maturing because of it—is A Quiet Place Part II's beating heart. The journey is buoyed by sound designers Malte Bieler and Brandon Jones; their work is, of course, key to creating a lot of the movie's best scares, but more importantly, it's essential to putting us in Regan's shoes, navigating this hell-world as a deaf person. The moment from this movie that stuck most in my head involves Regan waking up to think she lost her hearing aid, an emotional breakdown from Simmonds that takes place in complete silence. The payoff hits harder than any monster claw.
The film's weaknesses lie in its ambitions. It admirably expands on the locked-house isolation of the first film, but there are aspects of its world-building that aren't explored enough to feel like more than plot devices. "The ones who are left aren't worth saving," Emmett tells Evelyn, an extremely Walking Dead-esque introduction of humans-gone-bad in the apocalypse that definitely factors into the film, but in a way that comes off as perfunctory, a way to build up an (admittedly jaw-dropping!) set-piece and not much more. (It's also the portion of the film that wastes Scoot McNairy, an actual federal crime if I'm not mistaken.)
But when A Quiet Place Part II really focuses inward, at the deep loss and rebuilding that the Abbotts are enduring as the world continues to crumble, it's a triumph. The way Krasinski manages to build visual chaos with such a vivid human core at its center suggests A Quiet Place actually has the staying power of a major modern horror epic.
Rating: A-