A QUIET PLACE II

How do you make a movie where most of its communicative interaction among its characters is done through gesture, less sound and barely any form of vocal communication present? A Quiet Place is the a textbook answer to this question. The first time I got to see the first movie. I never fully knew what I was getting into, except that I was told they barely talked in the movie, I got curious and watched with great intrigue. A quiet place is a movie where all those involved in its creation knew what they were doing and to unpack this sequel. You will need to do a catch up with the part one. There is no point watching the part two without watching the first. So if you're in the category of those people who haven't watched the first part. Stop reading this article and find where to watch the first part, then comeback to this article. If you've seen the first movie. Proceed ahead.

A Quiet Place II takes place immediately after the events of the first movie with no time jump. Except for the flashback at the beginning, that shows us how the invasion started; this sheds more light to the invasion story. Now to the current timeline, the main plot starts with at the aftermath of the first movie. The Abbott family have to move out of their farm which is not longer safe for them. Now that they even have a baby in hand, it's more dangerous for them. They eventually move out of their space and try to find a shelter with the neighbor they've been communicating with through signal fire in the first movie, but getting to the neighbor, made them discover seeking shelter won't be enough to sustain them and they need to do more. They also find out that the world around them has also changed as it has been more than a year since the invasion started and other survivors are not welcoming.

I will just a give you guys a checklist of some of the things this sequel does and how it goes about it. Starting with the cast. The cast list is still a handful, although since the demise of the lead male cast Lee Abbott played by John Krasinski, the new main male lead is Emmett played by Cillian Murphy. The run time is still short. In fact it will be one of the shortest movies you'll see this year. It's just about 1 hour 30 minutes long and even lesser if you deduct the opening scene that serves as a flashback.

The plot, the world and character building. The plot is a continuation and progressive. By the time the credits rolled, I wanted to see more and most especially see where things are headed for the survivors. I guess there is a possible sequel coming. The world building is given more details as we get to see more survivors. Not much is revealed about them and very little is still known about the monsters. There wasn't much character development in this sequel as it's an immediate follow up to the first movie. The CGI quality hasn't dropped, the monster being the main focus of the CGI still feels real, nasty and terrifying.

Last but not the least on my checklist is the tension. This is one of the core elements of the first movie, and it is retained in this sequel. You'll get the best out of this tension in the last minutes of the runtime. 

A Quiet Place II is an interesting watch but also not without some problems. I won't like to spoil this movie for you, but there is a part after the midpoint of the runtime where I found to be very questionable. For a movie where the audience is paying so much close attention to what is happening on screen due to the nature of the movie. The audience can easily spot questionable actions by the characters, and that's what happens with two of the characters. I didn't expect them to make a forced plot progression through some of these events. While it didn't take much away from the experience, the end goal of these questionable events was out of the necessity to drive the plot forward and generate further tension. If it's effective or not, it's up to the audience to decide on their own intuition. I mean one of the characters just explains to another character how savage the other survivors have become, then few minutes later, he sees a suspicious little girl which screams 'I'm a bait and a trap' then proceed to fall for it. One would think this character will be very cautious with sharp instinct and having expressed how aware of the dangers they are likely to face outside their safe space. I kind of want to call this part lazy writing/scripting because I can think of anything else beside that. I'll leave you to figure out the other part for yourself. Personally, this is the only downside I found to be a tiny let down in this movie for me. Everything else is gets a straight pass.

A Quiet Place II is a nice sequel to drive the story forward in a right direction. Overall I didn't quite get the feeling the first part gave me in this sequel. I believe it is how the continuity of the story is driven that gives me the impression I get. A sequel doesn't necessarily have to live up to the hype of its predecessor, it just needs to drive the story forward with a consistent tempo. I'm not saying this sequel is a bad movie. Don't get me wrong. If you've seen the first part. It's definitely worth it to watch this sequel. I highly recommend this movie.