KYMM'S 365 DAY MOVIE CHALLENGE #19: A Quiet Place Part II (2021, John Krasinski, USA)

I’ve been wanting to see this movie for absolutely weeks, but Blake didn’t want to see it and we kept putting other films ahead of it. However…

This week it was either F9 or A Quiet Place Part II, and the latter won out at last! Because we are not fast and furious people. We are slow and sanguine. I don’t know why he was fighting against it, we saw the original together and both liked it a lot, it must just have been the mysterious ways of men and how they think. They are inscrutable, you know.

A Quiet Place Part II is 100% the kind of movie to see in a theatre and with someone, because what’s the fun of screaming without thinking, “Well, I just killed everyone in the theatre.”Before it started, Blake said, “How many times do you think you’ll scream? I guess four.” “…seems low,” I replied. And then proceeded to scream three times before the opening credits. The grand total was seven, which doesn’t count little whimpers, or waving my arms in the air, not at all like I just don’t care, but like I care a great deal but I don’t want to attract the ear monsters.

The film starts before the last film did, on day one of the ear monsters dropping to earth to lay waste to everyone who isn’t a name actor, so we start with Lee (John Krazinski) arriving late at his son’s Little League game. The son, Marcus, (Noah June), is terrified of getting hit by the ball, but will find out in mere moments what terror really is, and it ain’t a close pitch.

After an extremely tense and exciting opening sequence, we bounce forward in time to right exactly when the last film ended. Krazinski is dead, Evelyn (Emily Blunt) is a badass, and now they know that the feedback from the daughter, Regan’s (Millicent Simmonds) cochlear implant can defeat the ear monsters, because they are giant ears.

But also, their house is simultaneously flooded and on fire, so the three of them and the infant child have to leave their relatively safe nest and venture towards one of the people who also sets flame beacons at night to show that not everyone is dead, that they are not alone.

In the pre-credit sequence, we met Emmett (Cillian Murphy), also at the Little League game, who was their friend, but that is whose compound they reach, and he is not welcoming three people and a baby in, not permanently, no matter how much they were friends in the before times. hey end up hearing music on the radio, and Regan figures out that is it a message, and goes off to save what is left of the world with the cochlear implant feedback knowledge, and then the movie breaks up into three stories, Regan and Emmett, Marcus and the baby, and Evelyn, with intercutting between the three groups and their adventures.

It is extremely well done, we the audience always know where we are in which story, and what we are looking at, and all the stories climax together, with the tension building incredibly. Most impressive editing and scripting.

The only unfortunate thing is that Emily Blunt kind of gets shunted off to the side, having the least adventuresome adventure of any of the characters, except possibly for the baby, who is in peril, natch, but cannot really do anything to improve or worsen his situation. Being a baby. But the reason for this shunting is because of the children having to grow up and come into their own.

Millicent Simmonds as Regan gives an absolutely star-making performance. As a deaf actress, she has an incredibly mobile and expressive face, which she uses to great effect. She is the true hero of the film, as she is the one who makes everyone else break out of their safe nests, just hoping to not die, but instead to get out and live and take their planet back.The film absolutely sets us up for A Quiet Place Part III, and I am waiting to scream through that one as well, attracting ear monsters wherever I go.

Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog