31 Days of Halloween: A Quiet Place Part II

2021, John Krasinski (A Quiet Place) -- Amazon

My write-up of the A Quiet Place was eaten up by the great Hiatus Creature of 2018, but you can take my word for it, I enjoyed it. Recent PoAp with monsters is always down my alley, and he did a LOT with tension and silence, despite being littered with logical inconsistencies. I find that when making movies like this one, where it relies on a specific premise (a deaf girl vs blind monsters with acute hearing) they often sacrifice logic for theme and tone. Given that the delivery of this movie was sooooo good, I forgave it a lot. I was looking forward to the sequel despite knowing it was would be sans Krasinski himself, as he was such a good character. Alas, director chair took precedence over character survival.

We do get a good prequel segment at the beginning of the new movie, where we get to see Day One. Small town American families doing small town baseball things when they all look up to see a rather large .... thing crashing into the Earth, burning up the atmosphere. I am sure he intended on having this explain "the monsters are aliens!" but it just led to more questions for me. 

Is that an asteroid crashing down? Is it a spaceship crashing? If its an asteroid, wouldn't we be dealing more with a full-on apocalyptic event after it crashes? If it's a spaceship were these monsters the crew, or just cargo or criminals being transported? Maybe it was a spaceship that had been shot down by militaries, and there is a whole other movie's worth of THAT story? Yep, doing my filling in blanks thing again.

But again, its a movie to focus on theme and tone than explanations. So, skip logic and just enjoy the tension.

Mom (Emily Blunt, Edge of Tomorrow) knows they have to leave, to go beyond the confines of their nice soft sand paths, out into the world of crunchy leaves. Sure, daughter (Millicent Simmonds, Wonderstruck) has her hearing aid defense against the creatures but its not infallible, and they still have a crying baby, and the bottled air, that allows them to seal the baby in a box, is running low. But where do they go?

Where ever they were going, they end up in an abandoned factory in which an old friend (Cillian Murphy, 28 Days Later) is hiding / living. He had his own family losses and has not recovered. Guilt and necessity gather them together. Daughter has her own designs on the future, a repeating song that she believes is coming from a small island off the coast. If there is a signal, there are people and hopefully they are safe. But brother is wounded, so mom will stay with him, and Regan and Emmett will make their way there.

Sure, the gimmicks of the movie are most often repeated, and some could be considered tired, but the way Krasinski builds the tension still works. They never know where the creatures are, especially Regan and her limited hearing. Sure, they have a weapon against them, but these things are FAST and next to impossible to wound. If the first movie was about just plain survival and the keeping alive of positive spirits despite all odds being against them, this movie is about providing hope for the future.

Again, my brain went down the empty blanks path, one not covered in white sand. All too often these movies are within a confined area, one with little interaction with anywhere else. We apply the rules (everyone is likely dead, there is no military, no government) we see locally to the rest of the world. But for all we know, there are more out there, entirely different situations playing out. Krasinski plays this card of possibilities, an island of at peaee survivors, a signal that could broadcast Regan's defense. I bought into it and wondered, what will the next story be.