(He’s been around, but mostly busy with TV’s Peaky Blinders.) Few actors are quite as skilled at keeping the audience on edge he can walk a fine line between heroic and deranged, unsettling and secure, and in this role, those possibilities play to his advantage. Murphy also figures largely into this installment, and boy, did I miss seeing Cillian Murphy in movies. The pair are two of the best teen actors working today, and their sibling chemistry is enough to carry the whole movie without any adults. Jupe is stuck with the hard work - playing the kid who’s terrified all the time - but Simmonds (who, like her character, is deaf) also extends her run of great, emotionally resonant performances, turning into a bit of an action hero herself. Blunt remains one of Hollywood’s most reliably interesting action performers, swinging between the extremes of vulnerability and boldness that make perfect sense for a terrified, bereaved mother of three. I’m reluctant to reveal many details since suspense is so vital to a film like this, but there’s plenty else of note. Soon we jump forward in time, to the moments after A Quiet Place ended, and pick up the story from there. Krasinski returns to this sequel as director and sole writer (he co-wrote the first film), and he has a good sense of how to build tension in what we’re seeing and what we’re hearing. The opening sequences of A Quiet Place Part II feel obviously influenced by Spielbergian visions of apocalyptic catastrophe (there are echoes of War of the Worlds everywhere). Suddenly, fireballs from the sky crash onto the field, and havoc breaks loose. Nearby on the bleachers, gruff neighbor Emmett (Cillian Murphy) hangs onto his radio and watches his kids play. Evelyn (Blunt) and Lee (Krasinski) keep tabs on their three kids: daring Regan (Millicent Simmonds), who is deaf timid Marcus (Noah Jupe), swinging away at home plate and curious Beau (Dean Woodward), hanging onto the fence and watching his big brother play. On day one of the rest of their lives - not in a good way - the Abbott family are in their quiet New England hamlet with their neighbors, watching a Little League baseball game. A Quiet Place Part II starts in the story’s past. It’s sincere and bittersweet, and it clearly tapped into something that moved audiences.Īnd, for the most part, it does. And I think that’s why it was such a hit: It delivers some excellent jump scares and whittles down a common theme in horror - keeping your kids alive in a world that’s trying to kill them - to its essence. It’s a remarkably restrained film, mostly taking place over the course of one day, filling in only the barest background details, and letting us focus singularly on the terror of staying alive, and protecting vulnerable children, too. The world outside their home is stalked by alien-monsters who are triggered into murderous rage by noise of any kind. The premise is simple: A family of five lives alone in the woods. Setting aside its star power (namely, Emily Blunt and John Krasinski), it was not obviously poised for success more than any other horror film. When A Quiet Place appeared in theaters in April 2018, it was a worldwide smash hit, and I’ve spent a while since then trying to figure out why.
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