Review: ‘A Quiet Place’ sequel creeps its way into theaters

BAXTER — The No. 1 movie in America playing only in theaters across the nation hardly makes a sound, but it made a big splash at the box office.

“A Quiet Place Part II” is playing at the Lakes 12 Theatre and the Sunset Cinema in Pequot Lakes, but the horror film is scaring the bejesus out of moviegoers everywhere who have seen the new release.

Writer-director John Krasinski returns to helm the sequel that’s rated PG-13 and stars his real-life wife Emily Blunt as a single mother of three — including a newborn, an anxiety-ridden boy, and a precocious and willful hearing-impaired girl — in a dystopian world full of dangers.

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The threat comes in the form of acutely sensitive aliens that hunt and kill their victims by sound, so any sneeze, cough, wheeze or footstep could be the person’s last if they aren’t careful, quick or crafty enough to elude, outrun or outsmart the aliens or can kill the fleet-footed creatures.

The 90-minute sequel picks up right where the original motion picture left off, with the family forced to leave their homestead after a devastating series of events upended their nuclear family with a new baby to care for who hasn’t learned to survive means staying silent.

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The Abbott family is forced to venture past the formerly relatively safe confines of their soundproof home and property to seek shelter elsewhere.

Blunt plays the matriarch of the family, but her daughter is the protagonist and driving force in the sequel, played emotively by Millicent Simmonds, who also uses sign language. Simmonds the actress has been deaf since infancy, having lost her hearing from a medication overdose.

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The family soon comes to learn the creatures aren’t the only dangers beyond their homestead. Some of the human survivors of the alien invasion have resorted to victimizing their own kind in order to eke out an existence in a world where the tiniest noise could get you killed.

Cillian Murphy plays Emmett, a former family friend who initially refuses to offer a safe place for the family to stay after his children and wife died tragically despite his best efforts to save them.

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“The people that are left … they’re not the kind of people worth saving,” Emmett tells mother Evelyn Abbott in a voice barely above a whisper.

Krasinski, who produced “A Quiet Place Part II” and co-starred in the first film, appears in a pulse-pounding flashback opening scene with his family in the sequel, a scene depicting the first day the alien invasion began.

Many may know the actor as Jim Halpert from the American version of the British TV series “The Office,” but the multi-hyphenated Krasinski has shattered box office expectations with “A Quiet Place Part II” and its $57 million Memorial Day haul, according to Rotten Tomatoes.

“A Quiet Place Part II” was the first film to be delayed when the COVID-19 pandemic began last March, according to Rotten Tomatoes, a review-aggregation website for film and television.

“A Quiet Place” was released in 2018 and made over $188 million after opening to $50.2 million that April. The stars of the original motion picture reprised their roles for the smash sequel about blind monsters with an acute sense of hearing.

“‘A Quiet Place Part II’ has grossed more than all but three films during the pandemic (‘Godzilla vs. Kong,’ ‘Tenet,’ ‘The Croods: A New Age’) and it will be passing those latter two by Tuesday (June 1),” according to Rotten Tomatoes.

The Paramount Pictures sequel holds an impressive 91% approval rating among critics and an even better 94% approval rating among audiences at Rotten Tomatoes.

The consensus from the critics at RottenTomatoes.com: “A nerve-wracking continuation of its predecessor, ‘A Quiet Place Part II’ expands the terrifying world of the franchise without losing track of its heart.”

FRANK LEE may be reached at 218-855-5863 or at frank.lee@brainerddispatch.com . Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bdfilmforum .

1/3: Frank Lee

2/3: A sound system devised by the late patriarch of a family may hold the key to repelling an alien species that hunt by sound. Photo by Fernando Lavin on Unsplash.com

3/3: Monitors inside the Lakes 12 Theatre in Baxter display scenes from "A Quite Place Part II," which has exceeded box office expectations with a $57 million Memorial Day haul. Frank Lee / Brainerd Dispatch

1/3: Frank Lee

2/3: A sound system devised by the late patriarch of a family may hold the key to repelling an alien species that hunt by sound. Photo by Fernando Lavin on Unsplash.com

3/3: Monitors inside the Lakes 12 Theatre in Baxter display scenes from "A Quite Place Part II," which has exceeded box office expectations with a $57 million Memorial Day haul. Frank Lee / Brainerd Dispatch

1/3: Frank Lee

2/3: A sound system devised by the late patriarch of a family may hold the key to repelling an alien species that hunt by sound. Photo by Fernando Lavin on Unsplash.com

3/3: Monitors inside the Lakes 12 Theatre in Baxter display scenes from "A Quite Place Part II," which has exceeded box office expectations with a $57 million Memorial Day haul. Frank Lee / Brainerd Dispatch