The utter joy of finally being back in a cinema again. With cinemas shut for a large portion of the past year here in the UK this was my first cinema trip of 2021 and only my second since the pandemic reached our shores. I hoped the sequel to A Quiet Place would be a good film to return for giving the concept and boy was I right.
The film opens with a flashback to the day the aliens first arrived with John Krasinski's Lee wandering through an empty town before meeting his family for a kids baseball game. Then the aliens arrive in the most bombastic way. 'This is what I have been missing' I thought to myself.
Soon we're back with the surviving members of the Abbott family from the first film. They soon meet their friend Emmett (Cillian Murphy) who is reluctant to help them having become disillusioned with life after losing his own family. Regan (Millicent Simmonds) sets off in the hope of finding a sanctuary thanks to clues heard on the radio whilst Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and Marcus (Noah Jupe) try to keep the new baby in the family safe.
The concept inevitably doesn't feel so novel in this sequel but that's not to say there aren't some great ideas. There was some discussion after the first film about how on Earth you keep a baby quiet in this universe and it's clear the Abbott's had a plan for this. Though it may no longer feel fresh the concept still works excellently and the film masterfully keeps things tense by constantly putting noisy items in the character's paths.
I thought that the film does a great job with the characters. Though Emily Blunt is front and centre of the poster and is always fantastic, the true stars here are the kids, Noah Jupe and especially Millicent Simmonds who is utterly fantastic here. They have to deal with the loss of their father whilst also attempting to fill his mantle, to look after their Mum and the new baby. I thought the climax involving this two characters was especially great to watch and was superbly well-executed.
Cillian Murphy is a welcome addition to this universe as Emmett and it's interesting to see a non-heroic character- when we meet him post-apocalypse he's the anti-Lee, a man who has lost everything and has no interest in helping others. He's made better by the presence of the Abbott family though and goes through a real development as the film progresses.
There's not been a great deal of talk about a sequel yet but this felt very much like the middle film of a trilogy. The first film had a clear end point to get to, the birth of the baby, whereas this one doesn't really. Certainly the story for the family isn't over and there are ideas the film touches on that could do with expanding, especially in regards to other survivors. There's a tense seen where it becomes clear that one group are not the kind of people worth saving but the lack of dialogue necessitated by the context means we have no real idea who they are and really what their intentions were. It certainly feels like a failure of this film that it has some interesting ideas that are probably fully explained in Krasinski's mind but are never explored in any depth on screen. A concluding film could fix this issue though if it gets made.
My feeling was that this is a film which is brilliantly well-directed with some great character work aided by some fantastic performances but it lacks the plot to make it truly fantastic. John Krasinski has cemented his place as a hugely talented director and I can't wait to see what he does next.
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