I Watch Films: A Quiet Place Part II

A Quiet Place Part 2*

I said in A Quiet Place not to think about it too hard. The sequel tries not to offer too much more to think about. The opening sequence, set on Day 1, introduces a character, sets up Chekov’s ASL sign and lets us see what happens when the monsters arrived in town. We’ve seen the monsters now, assuming we saw part 1, so keeping them hidden is of no further use**.

Who are the real monsters? Is it the armoured, invulnerable monsters who attack any sound they hear (some sounds not included)? Or is it the people who use the monsters to wipe out other people because, uh, maybe people turn bad in the apocalypse and supplies are short?

I mean when you put it like that…

Anyway the survivors from the first film have a weapon against the monsters and they set off to maybe do something about it. They encounter three different places, quiet in their own ways, and have intercutting setpiece fights. It’s pretty cool.

Watch This: For a monster sequel that uses the set up from the previous film without getting too bogged down
Don’t Watch This: It’s just part 2, if you didn’t like part 1 no point in seeing this

 

* A Quiet Place 2: A Quieter Place
A Quiet Place 2: Quiet Harder
2 Quiet 2 Place
A Quiet Place 2: I told you to be quiet!
A Quiet Place 2: Shh
A Quiet Place 2: Stop that racket or an unstoppable monster will come and kill you

** Anyway I have OPINIONS about horror sequels. If you survive a horror film then you’re maybe hurt by it, but you lived through it, right. Which makes you basically the same as an action movie protagonist. So there are diminishing returns in the horrorness of it, as either you need to escalate (in which case how bad was the first one, really?) or you don’t in which case this is the second or fifth vampire you’ve fought, it’s vampire of the week now, you need to look for the horror elsewhere (in which case, again, why have a sequel?)

For example I think moving from Alien to Aliens the explicit shift in genre from science fiction haunted house/spaceship horror to dark action thriller illustrates this well. Anyway rather than actually do some work on this make it a coherent argument I'll stop here.