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A Quiet Place Part II finally comes to cinemas almost 15 months after the intended release date of March 18th 2020.
By that point in the COVID19 proceedings, events started to accelerate in the UK to the point where lockdown was inevitable, and with a few days left before release, the film was pulled. A good thing for them since had it been planned for a week earlier, it probably would’ve still hit the big screen, seen a few people attend, flopped financially, and then gone to Blu-ray, DVD, streaming et al like so many others including Christopher Nolan’s superb Tenet, when he tried to be the ‘saviour of the summer’, last August.
Those films which were due out the week earlier, on Friday 13th (oh, the irony), took one for the team, but by the 20th, certain individuals in power finally started paying attention to what was going on.
But to the film, and A Quiet Place Part II begins before the first part started, showing how the aliens came down from the sky, amongst the little fluffy clouds. The colours were purple, and red, and yellow…
Cue lots of running around as the weird creatures jump out of nowhere, surprising everyone by running around, pushing cars into next week, sending everyone driving like a drunk, and causing plenty of crash/bash/smash. Even a quiet scene of several people holing up in a shop doesn’t last long before the uninvited guests smash through the window and throw their weight around.
The most obvious thing about opening scene, however, is that despite being set before the events of the first film, the kids have shot up in height!
Flash-forward to the present day, the house waterlogged, Dad gone, and just mum, two kids and the new baby. Nothing Martin Roberts, from Homes Under The Hammer, can suggest will put that right any time soon, so it’s on to find new digs.
Heading for a new refuge, the town looks like The Last Of Us, with more similarities to come. In fact, as it goes on, the characters walk through all kinds of locations including a pharmacy where a handful of useful items still remain. Quite frankly, by this point in the proceedings, there would be nothing left at all. Look at all those morons who were panic-buying toilet roll last year when the virus was unleashed by Xi Jinping.
Along the way, they cross paths with Emmett (Cillian Murphy), a guy she knew from the time of the first film, but whereas he could’ve saved the family back then, he didn’t. Or something. Anyhoo, he has a secret hidey hole to which they can escape – cue more sitting about while whispering. Meanwhile, Regan hatches a plan where she’ll head off to search for help which she believes is on an island. Her theory’s a bit of a stretch, but the plot has nowhere else to go at this point.
Traps will befall the cast members, hygiene is nowhere to be seen, but Regan is to the rescue with the feedback sound from her hearing aid.
There were a couple jump scares of note, but quite frankly, given that the first movie cost $17m to make and took $341m at the box office, it made its money back many times over, and this sequel really needed to bring its A-game. It failed. it just brought plot contrivances. In fact, it just feels like the middle part of a trilogy, where one character goes off in search of hope, and so it’ll be in the third film where something actually happens.
One weird scene shows two characters (I won’t say who, so as to avoid spoilers) walking cross a bridge full of abandoned cars. The fact pretty much every single car is the exact same model smacks of product placement…. ugh.
It’s also so slow, you’d think they had 3 hours to tell the story, and not 90 minutes.
Plus, it’s a derivative and lazy pile of crap, and in this world, there’s nothing that can’t be solved by just blowing shit up.
At least for The Last Of us Part II, they made a number of new monsters. For this sequel, John Krasinski couldn’t even be bothered to do that.
Somehow, A Quiet Place Part II has a score of 8/10 on IMDB as I write this, but quite why, I don’t know. If you’re looking for scares to match the first film, as the monsters bounce about, then all we see here is just a repeat of anything we’ve experienced previously.
A Quiet Place Part II is released in cinemas on June 3rd, and is available to pre-order on Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray, Amazon Video or DVD.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 97 minutes
Release date: June 3rd 2021
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Format: 2.39:1 (Dolby Vision, Anamorphic Panavision, Super 35)
Rating: 2/10
Director: John Krasinski
Screenplay: John Krasinski
Producers: Michael Bay, Andrew Form, Brad Fuller, John Krasinski
Characters: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods
Music: Marco Beltrami
Cast:
Evelyn Abbott: Emily Blunt
Lee Abbott: John Krasinski
Regan Abbott: Millicent Simmonds
Marcus Abbott: Noah Jupe
Emmett: Cillian Murphy
Man on Island: Djimon Hounsou
Police Officer: Okieriete Onaodowan
Marina Man: Scoot McNairy
Emmett’s Son: Zachary Golinger
Umpire: Blake DeLong
Island Person: Gary Sundown
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.