movie review - A Quiet Place II
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This is a sequel to a sci-fi thriller in which massive comets have fallen to Earth, spawning alien killing machines as they go. The aliens are blind, and cannot swim but they have excellent hearing and echo-location. All bone and jaw, they are nightmare fuel with heads that open to reveal countless teeth on hinged flaps like a carnivorous skunk cabbage. Not exactly eating what they kill, they seem more like a programmed bio-weapon than a life-form. But none of this is discussed in this high-paced sequel any more than it was in the original (or even less). Instead, we're very much focused on the survival of the human population.
The movie opens on the day the comets fall, days or weeks before the events of the first movie. This scene introduces some new characters. It's here that one of the films only tiny jarring notes occurs: just because it's a sequel to us doesn't mean that we shouldn't get a moment of confusion when the humans realize they're under attack. That this doesn't happen, and that without a moment's shock the humans all start taking action came as an oddity.
Then we're off to the present day, which is immediately after the events of the first movie, some months from the fall of human civilization. We follow the fate of the now-single mother and her two surviving children, plus the premature baby. Things get off to a bad start and then get worse. The family is separated when the daughter decides to go it alone after they hear a radio broadcast.
This broadcast is the second jarring note, and it's not the last. Why play music on a radio if you're trying to find fellow survivors? Why not tell everyone exactly where you are and why it's safe. When they encounter a friend of the (late) husband, he flatly refuses to help and it's not clear why. He's not exactly safe himself, and he's already lost so much. Did the writers place him there just to use his home and his stuff as a set? He doesn't seem well thought-out.
I enjoyed this at first viewing, but the off notes started their own resonance in my head and I was wondering if this was handled the best way. The scenes are so spare and purposeful that it's a remarkable stand-out to so many of today's formulaic movies. The finale in particular is superb but not much about this piece lasted with me. The first is better.
Recommended. For fans of the action genre or the first movie.