This film was supposed to be released last year just a week before the first lockdown was put in place. The studio pushed it several times but finally it is available to see in cinemas and what a film to have for the great reopening. I’m so glad they didn’t put this on a streaming service as this is a film that really is at its best seen in a crowded cinema.
A Quiet Place was a surprise hit in 2018, written and directed by John Krasinski, merely a sitcom actor, it made an absolute fortune in the box office. He returns to write and direct and act in a few scenes here too.
This film starts exactly where the first film ends. (A Quiet Place had one of my favourite final shots in the history of cinema ). We are following the Abbott family, they are a year and a half into a dystopian future where monsters will attack and kill you if you make any loud noises.
The family leaves their farm after the fire in the first movie and meet their neighbour, Emmett, who shelters them. Through a radio frequency they hear music and assume it is survivors who are reaching out to people. Emmett warns them not to go, that other humans who have survived are not the type of people you want to meet up with but teenage Regan Abbott ignores his warning and sets out to find the source of the music.
Great to see Cillian Murphy as Emmett, always an engaging presence on screen but the real star here is young Millicent Simmonds who plays Regan. The daughter of the Abbott family, she is deaf in real life and just steals the show here as she comes of age in this bleak new world in front of our eyes. Emily Blunt is a little underused and that is a shame, while I was glad to see Murphy in the film I think you could easily have used Blunt in his role. But that would mean a Hollywood film with no male lead? Surely an impossibility.
Putting Regan in some of the main action scenes where the sound is cut to see how the world looks from her perspecitve is brilliant fun. The entire premise is based around this 'sensory underload' and we get a new layer when we see Regan dealing with the monsters. It makes it such an enjoyable romp.
All that said maybe I am not in a place to give an unbiased opinion on this film. It's been seven months since the cinemas were open and I could have watched a shipping forecast read aloud by John Major and given it three stars. But I can only speak my truth, as the kids say, and I reckon this is an absolute belter. Well worth a trip to the cinema on a rainy (or sunny ) day.
