Movie Review: A Quiet Place II Embraces The Quietness of Loss
I cried a lot watching a Quiet Place II, and I was surprised how more emotional the experience felt for two reasons: 1) if you saw the first one, you are already invested in this family 2) there are way more families to invest in this time. As someone whose family has been part of two natural disasters, in Puerto Rico, I was in awe of how well writer and director John Krasinski captured the moment you are blanked by the very feeling that you are about to die.
Unsurprisingly, the sound of a this film is another, if not the main character, which was John’s purpose. Sound is what draws you into this “quiet world;” where even a whisper can be fatal. Yet, the first 20 minutes are incredibly powerful in displaying my opening statements. It goes back, in time, to the day “everything changed,” and the last few minutes of normalcy the Abbott family and their neighbors knew. Something happens to you when, all of a sudden, a regular day you thought would be like every other becomes randomly and rapidly destructive. Those minutes captured how terrifying breathless and numbingly emotional I was when the earth shook beneath me in Puerto Rico, and like Emily Blunt’s Evelyn and her vacant, shocked stare, you I wondered, “Wow! My life is ending now…. Like this!” It takes an exceptional actor to make you feel what you wish to forget with such vivid awe.
The cast of a Quiet Place II is absolutely amazing, and this sequel allows them to expand and deepen their emotional spaces. By now. they KNOW their characters like the back of their hand, and, tragically, their characters know life as it was will never be. The question, which happens after any trauma, is whether the “new normal” can become good or happy. At a special screening, John described the film as a potential franchise with Millicent Simmonds’Regan as the lead heroine, of which her journey definitely relates to my question/ the film’s core dilemma. She is a warrior whose most prominent weapon is hope and a determination to make it real. Simmonds’ captivates the screen with the courage and innocence of a child trapped in a not so child-friendly world. Her bond with Noah Jupe’s Marcus, Regan’s brother, grows further and anchors both teens as potential, action-horror heroes that will carry the sequels. Still, Blunt’s Evelyn and the addition of Cillian Murphy’s Wyatt amplifies the emotional weight of being a parent/ adult in a world that, again, is not child-friendly.
The way Emily Blunt can drop a single tear instantly is super impressive. She oozes the frustration and fearlessness of a parent protecting their kids during absolute horror. Her pain and love is palpable, of which Krasinski mentioned how the films were a love letter to his children; the first being about what you would do for them and the second being what you hope they do for themselves. With both her children more grown and a newborn, the weight of raising kids in a sad world feels heavier as we observe Murphy’s Emmett: whom has lost his kids. Murphy is perfection in embodying a truth many do not know or ignore about loss; it makes you so terrified to lose more, even if you feel you lost it all.
It is a strange thing that I, myself, have learned. Frankly, we are all raised with the belief that if you lose everything, you become fearless because there is a sense that you have nothing to lose, but Murphy captures how quieted you become. He moves like a man who has been made small and scared by how impossibly much he has lost from tragedy. It deeply moving to see how he emboldens to help the Abbott family and find hope that there can be a place without creatures running around destroying you because you breathed hard. Overall, the film is stunning in sound and scene. While it contains more action, but its true scares lie in its observance of resilience and the woes of fighting on to survive a world you don’t even like anymore. A Quiet Place II comes out May 28.
