The Abbott family’s misadventures continue. A mother and her three children survive in a world where every sound could be their last. The father of the family died heroically in the finale of the first film, the house flooded, and now they have to find a new home and walk into the light. It’s like when people struggling with difficulties find the solution when they find TonyBet contacts and ask their questions there.
“A Quiet Place” has gone from being an airtight horror movie to an action one. But even in this genre, John Krasinski remains a calculating formalist who soberly figures out the effect of sometimes original and sometimes tried-and-true techniques and doesn’t shy away from borrowing from the greats.
Sounds and Silence
The first part was impressive in its work with sound. On the one hand, sharp sonic contrasts were actively used there, making any viewer shudder. On the other hand, the sound directors achieved an equally shocking effect with silence – absolute ringing silence, when you can hear the blood beating in your temples.
In the second part, this technique works perfectly. One of Evelyn’s daughters is deaf, and in many scenes, viewers find themselves as if in her place.
In the first film, the locations were limited to the house, the nearest grove and a waterfall, and in the sequel, the sound map expanded along with going beyond the cabin in the woods. Instead of creaking floorboards are loud gunshots, instead of whispers, you hear shouts. New locations, characters, and other artistic challenges emerge.
The Monsters Came Out of the Shadows
One of the reasons for the success of the first film was the original genre formula: it was a horror for those who don’t like horror movies. The emphasis was on the build-up of suspense, on the expectation of the scary, rather than on its demonstration. The sequel is more straightforward in this respect. There are a lot more monsters. The threat here is evident, it is difficult to fight it, but it is possible, so the camera looks at the foreign monsters, carefully drawn by specialists of the Industrial Lights & Magic studio.
An Action Movie for Those Who Don’t Like Action Movies
A Quiet Place 2 is an action movie, suitable for viewers who are not interested in watching the endless gunfights. Every shot is like the last one, the heroes are not all-powerful, at the most crucial moments, something goes wrong, the obvious way of salvation turns out to be false, and even the toughest guys can lose their nerve. The suspense is only heightened by this.
Parallel Editing
In addition to playing with sound and genres, Krasinski skillfully deceives the audience’s expectations, making them expect a catch where there isn’t one. The face of one of the main characters at first is hidden behind a mask, one scene we see almost entirely through a sniper scope, but through whose? The camera sneaks up on people from behind, as if it were mounted on the shoulder of a monster. But the main technique is parallel editing. The characters are disconnected, forced to survive on their own. But through the editing, the illusion of unity in time and space is created. It is as if the Abbotts are acting as a group, looking at each other and about to rush to their aid, but it is only an illusion.
Krasinski as Spielberg’s Disciple
“A Quiet Place Part II” begins with a flashback. The last day of a relatively peaceful life, almost the whole family is assembled. John Krasinski’s character, still alive, arrives at a baseball game where his son is participating. The boy doesn’t hit the ball with the bat, but soon everyone is not up to a sporting event. Ordinary life is disrupted by a monster invasion.
This short prologue fits a recitation of the basic rules of the game and Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” where right after the father and son’s failed baseball game, the apocalypse also begins.
Krasinski reproduces the “War of the Worlds” formula not only in detail. He similarly emphasizes family values, combines sentimentality with cold calculation, strives to make a universal movie from elements of different genres, and scrutinizes the material environment in the frame.
John Krasinski 
A Quiet Place (2018) 
