Review: 'A Quiet Place Part II' delivers chilling moments, and strong performances by Emily Blunt and Millicent Simmonds

If you accept the premise that “A Quiet Place” was a near-perfect horror thriller, and so perfectly self-contained that a sequel was unnecessary, then you can also accept that “A Quiet Place Part II” is the dessert that’s nearly as good as the meal that preceded it.

Director John Krasinski, who this time also wrote the screenplay solo (he co-wrote the first one with Bryan Woods and Scott Beck), appears in the new film’s prologue. It’s the day that the sound-sensitive space critters invaded, turning the Abbott family’s outing — watching teen son Marcus (Noah June) playing Little League — into an unceasing terror. 

The prologue also allows us to see Krasinski as the patriarch, Lee Abbott, trying to protect his wife, Evelyn (Emily Blunt), and their children: Marcus; Regan (Millicent Simmonds), who’s deaf; and Beau (Dean Woodward), who didn’t make it past the first 10 minutes of the first movie.

The rest of this sequel happens some 16 months later, immediately after the end of the first movie. Evelyn, carrying her new baby in a sling, travels with Marcus and Regan across the countryside, seeking a new place to hide from the horrific aliens — and, possibly, use the shrill noise from Regan’s hearing aid to immobilize the beasts long enough to kill them. At one stop, they encounter Emmett (Cillian Murphy), a family friend — his son was one of Marcus’ Little League teammates — who has become a hermit living underground in an abandoned factory.

Krasinski doesn’t mess too much with the formula that made the first “A Quiet Place” so chillingly effective. He shows the aliens more here than in the first film, but hides them enough to make their menace more palpable and frightening. And the sound design burrows into the subconscious, picking away at our nerves, to heighten the suspense.

What makes “A Quiet Place Part II” work is also what made the first one work: The strong performances by its female leads. Blunt (a k a Mrs. Krasinski) gives Evelyn a sharp intelligence and a keen sense of family protectiveness. Most fascinating is Simmonds, a Utah native, who shows how resourceful, brave and determined Regan can be — and does it without saying much at all.

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‘A Quiet Place Part II’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 28, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for terror, violence and bloody/disgusting images. Running time: 98 minutes.