WE START IN Millbrook, NY – an Anytown USA city – on day 1. The streets are all but empty and we’re left wondering why it’s so quiet. We see a familiar brown and tan pickup truck pull up to the side of a curb and parallel park between two cars and come to a stop. It’s then that Lee Abbott gets out of his car and enters a small store that we come to realize is the store from the first installment of A Quiet Place. How do we know this? The toy space shuttle of course. The shopkeeper is intently focused on the television and all but ignores Lee’s purchase. Waving him through with no regard. Oh to live in the times of knowing your neighbor this way.
A Quiet Place 2
We’re then taken on a walk with Lee as he saunters – let’s be honest John Krasinski is a decent saunterer – over to a baseball field to join what appears to be the entire village at a little league game. His wife motions for him to giddy up to the stands as she pushes the tiniest Abbot at the time, Beau, whose face we never see in this movie (beautifully done John) in a swing. Lee takes his seat next to his daughter, and says hello to Emmett, a friend and assumed neighbor who also has a son on the team. He banters with Lee and then asks Millicent the sign for a baseball term. Millicent in all of her teenage form rolls her eyes a bit and sarcastically shows Emmett the correct sign. He laughs and goes back to watching the game.
Then, all hades breaks loose and the world as this village in NY knows it is changed forever.
There are so many little things to take into this opening scene it almost feels like it’s longer than its actual length. The smiles of everyone out enjoying a beautiful day. The nervousness of Noah. The lack of a face for Beau. The smiles that Lee and Evelyn exchange as if they haven’t a care in the world. The growing into her own person Regan. Of course, the other main character is sound or lack of it. It’s used in such a way to make what appears to be a perfect painting of a town more of a Hitchcockian nightmare. Dropping the sound to intensify the fear and turmoil is a super smart way to move a movie along and then bringing it back in full force takes you over the edge.
Chaos ensues and one of my FAVORITE people on the planet at the moment meets a demise in record time. I can’t help but compare it to Jada Pinkett Smith’s role in ‘Scream’.
‘A Quiet Place’ masterfully has us thinking that no one else is alive in this town. That the Abbotts alone have survived this nightmare. ‘A Quiet Place 2‘ lets us know how wrong we are. Not only are there survivors, but some of them have gone bad. The second shows us not only that we’re wrong, but that we’re wrong in such a way that it produces a sick in the stomach type feeling.
Since I’m cynical by nature, one of the biggest plot twists was whispered through clinched teeth as I crouched in my seat next to my husband watching. It was hard not to see it as a way to move the movie forward to continue to create the tension we embraced from the first movie.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the two standouts from ‘A Quiet Place 2,’ Millicent Simmonds and Cillian Murphy. I do know that horror films have the potential to win awards – Get Out showed us that – and I kind of want to see Millicent receive one for the amazing way she brought Regan to life. She owns the role on her own and Cillian Murphy plays beautifully opposite her. Theirs is one of three storylines happening simultaneously at about the halfway point of the movie. The other two consist of Noah attempting to keep baby Abbott quiet as his mother, Evelyn, goes back into town to get medication for one of her children.
There are a couple of plot holes I’m interested in seeing other peoples reactions to, but I do feel like A Quiet Place 2 is a solid sequel and worth seeing in the theater as long as you feel safe.
A Quiet Place2 is out in theaters Friday, May 28, and stars Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Cillian Murphy, & Djimon Honsou.