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A Quiet Place Part II Review

Shut your mouth—we’re just talking about space aliens

BY ALEX DE VORE alex@sfreporter.com

John Krasinski probably didn’t know the kind of magic he had on his hands with 2018’s A Quiet Place, a horror/sci-fi/family drama kind of thing wherein horrific monsters from beyond the stars show up to slash fools using echolocation. Still, with wife Emily Blunt in tow, Krasinski (who both wrote and directed the original film and its new sequel) tapped into something special, and the new installment keeps those feels going.

In A Quiet Place Part II, we get a little origin story action in a flashback to the day the Earth stood silent, or at least the day a mysterious meteor crashed into our planet, unleashing horrifying and blind but powerful monsters. They’re like a combo of Slender Man, a praying mantis and some kind of ruthless jungle cat, and though they can’t see their prey, the monsters have builtin radar like woah.

The opening minutes are the film’s best—a combination of video gamey chaos (look to the beginning of the 2013 PlayStation game The Last of Us, wherein a zombifying mold rips apart a small Texas town) and the third-act kitchen/ raptor scene from Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Krasinski then jumps back to the fallout of the first Quiet Place’s ending, and it’s only a little noticeable that young actors Noah Jupe (Honey Boy) and Millicent Simmonds (Wonderstruck) have aged and grown. Blunt, brandishing a behemoth shotgun, is as badass as ever.

We follow the Abbott family from their utopian farm into the greater world, as signified by the literal end of the sandy path the family laid down to get around silently and barefoot. From there, A Quiet Place II unravels into a bit of a mess, both in pacing and in narrative. Mainly, we find callbacks to things that barely landed in the last film (or even this one’s early scenes), and that selfsame “are the monsters the monsters or are the leftover humans the monsters?” rhetoric we tend to find in movies like this rears its ugly head.

A borderline brilliant Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders) shakes things up as a neighboring farmer thought dead who begrudgingly learns what it is to care about the greater good, even after one loses everything. Jupe, as good a kid actor as there is, disappears into the voice of whiny reason (he honestly goes around almost getting himself and others killed, and his talents feel wasted here) while Blunt settles into more of a supporting role to Simmonds’ turn as the golden child who would save everyone. A deaf actress playing the lead is a big deal (representation seriously matters), and the sound design built around Simmonds’ perspective is so artfully executed that we don’t even notice how it phases after a while—the true mark of a well-done subtle effect. All around her, the monster mash unfolds in percussive but silent violence—it’s cool.

If nothing else, A Quiet Place II sets the stage for its own trilogy, which does mean a less-than-satisfying resolution. Even so, Kransinski struck gold with this idea, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have another journey into the fray.

7

+ SIMMONDS

AND MURPHY;

SOUND DESIGN;

THE IDEA

ITSELF

- NOAH JUPE IS

WASTED; ENDS

ABRUPTLY

A QUIET PLACE PART II Directed by Kransinki With Simmonds, Murphy, Blunt and Jupe Violet Crown, PG-13, 97 min.

THE COURIER

7+ HISTORY; MERAB NINIDZE SLAYS - SUPPORTING ROLES ARE BORING;

TEDIOUS FINAL ACT

You probably don’t know the name Greville Wynne, but the British businessman-turned-spy is at least partly responsible for putting the kibosh on what very well could have been the end of the world during the Cold War.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Wynn in The Courier, a new docu-drama that delves into Wynne’s contributions to British intelligence’s leaking of documents proving Russia had installed nukes in Cuba during the Kennedy/ Khrushchev standoff. The real-life Wynne was sent by England’s MI6 (like their CIA) to warn deep-seated Russian asset Oleg Penkovsky about impending dangers. Fearing for his family, Penkovsky signaled the Brits about Khrushchev’s desire for confrontation circa 1960 and, working with Wynne over a few years, the pair was able to steal and leak classified information that tipped the scales in America’s favor. War, as we know, was averted, and the rest is history.

Cumberbatch proves as capable as always in his quest to play every British history-maker ever (even if his performance as Alan Turing in 2014’s The Imitation Game felt more inspired). Here as Wynne, Cumberbatch’s take on terrified-yet-resolute is palpable, but Merab Ninidze as Penkovsky is the real winner of the film. Even borderline hackneyed speeches about two people being the start of change feel moving with Ninidze’s stoic delivery, and as the truth of his risks unfold, we learn why Wynne was so willing to risk his own life in reciprocity.

Elsewhere in the film, Ms. Maisel star Rachel Brosnahan provides a serviceable turn as the American CIA agent Emily Donovan, whose efforts to protect both Wynne and Penkovsky makes the ultimate fallout of Khrushchev’s—and indeed Russia’s—paranoia feel all the more heartbreaking. Scenes with Wynne’s family (played by Fargo’s Jessie Buckley and some fucking kid) feel tacked on, or at least like semi-hollow attempts at adding drama; it kind of stings that Buckley’s turn as Sheila Wynne at worst amounts to little more than an obstacle in the grand scheme of things and, at best, an offscreen motivator.

No spoilers here, though the true history is readily available online, but The Courier may best be described as harrowing and a bit tedious. Yes, it’s fascinating and perhaps a lesser-known chapter in international history—but it’s not the nonstop thriller its trailer would have us believe. (Alex De Vore) Amazon, PG-13, 112 min.

STATE FUNERAL

7+ THOUGHT PROVOKING;

ASTONISHING FOOTAGE

- REQUIRES DEDICATION

State Funeral is a heck of a slog—but it’s an effective one. An hour in, I kept wondering if it was really going to be two-plus hours wherein people amble about Russia looking forlorn, yet, at its conclusion, viewers might be thoroughly converted to its historical value.

At its core, the film is a narratorless archival footage fest that focuses on the Soviet people’s silent reactions to Stalin’s death in 1953. It’s a bit of a drudge if you don’t know your history—though, to be fair, it’s a bit of a drudge even if you do, just with a little more oomph. The repetitive imagery isn’t lacking purpose, however, and it gives viewers a chance to truly peer into ’50s-era Soviet Russia. That alone is at least a little fascinating, even if everything else feels more like something we should know even if we don’t wanna.

The masses stood dumbfounded in the wake of Stalin’s death. Many likely never knew another leader, or at least couldn’t recall one; to them, the man industrialized a peasant land and defeated the greatest invasion into their nation after hundreds of years of God knows how many invasions. Were his crimes against humanity widely known to the Soviets by the 1950s, or were his mourners hung up on what brutal regime might have come next? What’s that saying about the devil you know? Either way, Stalin killed millions. But still, when a national radio “suggested” it, the entire Russian nation, from the Mongolian border to the Polish border, stood at attention, together, as their fallen leader’s portrait was hoisted over an in-progress dam amidst rising smoke and the clatter of work hammers.

The irony there is beautiful—a society built on collectivism indulging in Godlike worship for one man. But the grand irony is in how, within three years of Stalin’s passing, Nikita Khrushchev began the de-Stalinization of the USSR and condemned his predecessor for crimes against the Soviet people and beyond. This haunts the footage and gives State Funeral a creeping effectiveness, even if it feels 40 hours long. While tedious, director Sergey Loznitsa offers proof that a society can flip on itself with shocking speed. We should probably remember that. (Riley Gardner) MUBI, NR, 135 min.