John Krasinski’s Lee Abbott may have bit the dust in the actor-turned-filmmaker’s directorial debut but that doesn’t stop him from returning in the opening moments of A Quiet Place Part II. The scene is set as Marco Beltrami’s foreboding soundtrack creeps into our senses as a ‘Day 1’ title card slips into frame. The end is nigh but no one knows anything about the devastation barreling their way. In fact, it’s just another beautiful summer day in Small Town America. The Abbot family and their tight-knit community gather in blissful ignorance at a little league game. Marcus (Noah Jupe) is up to bat when the sky erupts in flaming streaks. Something is coming. Families break off into nuclear clusters, rushing to their vehicles, heading home to regroup. Before anyone has any sense of what’s happening, monsters reign down, killing anything that makes a sound. A quiet place is born, in flame and in blood.

The well-endowed, breathless opening sequence underscores what made Krasinski’s first outing behind the camera so thrilling to begin with: he manages to create a sense of community and humanity and then blow it up in our faces, opting to let the performances and very specific chemistry between characters fill in blanks that other scripts might try to fill with exposition dumps and IP world-building. Where other alien invasion movies might place more emphasis on the laying waste portion of events, A Quiet Place Part II wants to firmly establish the emotional heart of the piece before throwing everything to chaos, wisely knowing that tension and thrills only come when we have a vested interest in the humanity of the characters as they face, best, and/or are bested by adversity.

This electrifying back-in-time prologue is proof perfect that Krasinski the director knows when to apply the gas and when to let it off, clipping the noise-monsters vs early survivors showdown just as we’re leaning so far forward in our seat that we’ve nearly run out of room. The whole of the film could have existed in these early days of the sound-pocalypse but Krasinski’s script jolts forward. Time stops for no one.

Emerging from flame and blood themselves is the remainder of the Abbott family, A Quiet Place Part II picking up exactly where the last film left off. Their farmstead still burning, Evelyn (Emily Blunt), Marcus, and Regan (Millicent Simmonds) are left with no place to call home after fighting off (and killing) one of the sword-limbed, sound-hunting monsters. A good bit hopeless – what with no patriarch and a wailing baby – but armed with a proven method for killing off the murderous monsters that involves amplifying the deaf Regan’s hearing device, the Abbott family soberly sets off into the unknown beyond the sand path to find quarter. When they chance upon old friend turned hermitic survivor Emmett (Cillian Murphy) and a not-so-far-off radio signal, Regan has an idea that could give humanity one last shot at species survival.

Though Part II never quite lives up to the heart-rending highs or disquieting thrills of the original, it’s an undeniably well-constructed coda that passes the baton of responsibility in sneakily emotional ways. Where Lee and Evelyn felt the burden of protecting their offspring weighing down on their every single move in the last chapter, Regan sees possibility beyond survival, her youthful optimism signaling hope in the fog of hopelessness. If it is a parent’s duty to protect, it is only in letting go that the child can become a protector themselves. Silence is not enough. Hiding from the world is not living. Regan wants to do her part in making the future her baby brother will grow up in actually survivable.
Asked about returning, Krasinski expressed caution with the idea of revisiting this world. On the sequel, he explained, “I said I would never do a second one. Nothing could be as personal or be as organic to me as the first one, and turns out, I think I like this one better.” And this makes perfect sense. As an allegory for parenting, A Quiet Place Part II moves the dial forward, tracking the next chapter in a child’s life when they no longer require protection and make the bold choices that their parents never could. If A Quiet Place was about the hardship and sacrifices of parenting, A Quiet Place Part II is about parents watching their babies grow up and go off to college, into the world, armed with the wisdom of their parents and the courage of hope. It’s about not having to pick up your kids when they fall down because they’ve already picked themselves up. It follows that Krasinski is proud of his baby.

This emphasis on the next generation means that Simmonds becomes the de-facto lead and she carries that burden with a kind of wise-beyond-her-years grit. For his sake, Murphy is a great addition to the cast, even if his presence paired with Simmonds’ central role edges Blunt a bit too far from the central spotlight for my liking. Some of the story choices fall a bit flat as Krasinski struggles to find enough for the Abbott family to do when set upon on their own journeys and Blunt is amongst those most affected. And though there’s things I was left wishing that Part II gave us more of: Emily Blunt’s whispering badass mama bird; the scoop on a marina cannibal community led by a wild-eyed Scoot McNairy; whatever is up with the larger world outside the Tri-State area; Part II succeeds by keeping things small and personal. The specificity and care to character and growth allows us to arrive at a very specific statement that perfectly cements what Krasinski is after: the pride of kids outdoing their parents. But with monsters.

CONCLUSION: There’s more monsters and even more quiet – if less scares and emotional crescendos – in John Kransinski’s still-effective horror sequel ‘A Quiet Place Part II’, which moves the story of The Abbott family surviving sound-hunting monsters by passing the baton on to the next generation. Expanding the world to new threatening places in unexpected ways, this follow-up doesn’t always give us more of what we want but still tells the story Kransinski wants to tell very effectively.