Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

A Quiet Place Part II Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 27, 2021

A few years ago, Director John Krasinski's A Quiet Place made a lot of noise -- and a lot of money -- as one of the most innovative Survival-Horror films in many years. The sequel, almost equally successful in following on the original, faced a unique challenge as one of the biggest, and amongst the first, movies to be theatrically impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally scheduled to release on March 20, 2020, theater closures, stay-at-home orders, and other obstacles altered plans until the film finally hit heaters more than a year later. And it was a film well worth the wait. Though perhaps not quite so groundbreaking and visionary as the original, it's every bit as psychologically intense, emotionally draining, and cinematically satisfying as its predecessor.

Spoilers for the original film follow.

A Quiet Place Part II picks up immediately where the original ended, save for prologue flashback to the time everything started. A Little League baseball game is interrupted when a strange, fiery object flies through the sky. Mayhem ensues, and the audience earns a glimpse of what happened in the moments when the crisis began. It would make a fine film on its own, expanded to explore the story from either the Abbot family’s perspective or another’s point of view. It’s an intense open (that returns John Krasinski to the film for an extended cameo) that is well worth exploring in greater detail in the future.

As the story proper begins, Evelyn (Emily Blunt), Regan (Millicent Simmonds), and Marcus (Noah Jupe), along with their newborn baby, have no choice but to move on from the sanctuary their late father built for them and risk a trek through a world now dominated by alien creatures with hypersensitive hearing and a mean streak. The family approaches an abandoned steel mill but inadvertently set off a sound alarm that triggers the monsters to their presence. Fleeing inside, Marcus finds himself caught in a bear trap and the family survives only when mourning widower and self made survivalist Emmett (Cillian Murphy) comes to their aid. When Regan and Marcus discover a radio signal, Regan believes it to be a hidden message meant to draw survivors to a safe place. When she leaves to investigate, Emmett, who knew her late father, pursues. Meanwhile, Evelyn has no choice but to leave her wounded son and infant child alone to secure medical supplies vital to the family's survival.

In a cinema world dominated by dizzying visuals and the hypersonic audio cues, a film that must rely on narrative, emotional resonance, and legitimate terrors in which sound is literally all but a death sentence makes for a nice reversal of the typical cinema narrative where “more is better.” Krasinski builds the film, and its predecessor, on narrative depth and tension, telling a story rather than showing it. Actions literally speak louder than words in A Quiet Place Part II, and the movie will only “go loud” as needed. When the action invariably arrives, when stealth has failed, music marches forward with intense depth and gunfire pounds the stage to amplified effect. The well-versed contrast between deathly vital silence and intense audio output only amplifies the film’s tension and draws more attention to the times when the silence breaks and all hell breaks loose. This makes the jump scares and the silence alike all the more terrifying. The film masters the art of tension building and sudden release. This may not be so groundbreaking and inherently effective as its predecessor, but it’s awfully close.

Also like its predecessor, A Quiet Place Part II is intense, disquieting, and discomforting. It’s legitimately gripping and somewhat scary, too. It doesn’t linger too much on gore – most serious wounds are not seen clearly or close-up – and it’s the sudden influx of terror building on sometimes effectively and agonizingly long stretches of tension-filled quiet that make everything work so well. As the story develops and the characters separate into their own adventures, Krasinski balances focus and parallels structure for maximum emotional, visual, and even audio impact as the scenes and scenarios allow. It’s brilliantly made, very well performed, and almost everything one could reasonably want from a sequel to 2018’s surprise hit in what is now, hopefully, a franchise in the making.

A Quiet Place Part II Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Quiet Place Part II was shot on film makes the transition to 1080p Blu-ray with a well rounded, albeit fairly basic, high definition presentation. The presentation holds to its natural grain structure, amplified at times, particularly in low light where it intensifies and looks a bit noisy. Black levels are a little flat and thin as well, but the picture is otherwise in fine shape. Details are sharp, not so aggressive as some other presentations but capably yielding a level of innate filmic complexity that doesn't relent no matter the lighting or location, whether bright, sun-soaked exteriors or the tightly cramped and poorly lit bowels inside the steel mill. Positive facial elements, sharp textures around that mill, and even intricate digital creature effects look surprisingly clear and robust. Colors are healthy, particularly natural greens. There's a good sense of pop and tonal expressiveness at work. Flesh tones appear accurate. There are no major print shortcomings or encode failures of note. This is not a notable image in any way, but it gets the job done, unassuming as it may ultimately be.

A Quiet Place Part II Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Dolby Atmos soundtrack offers some incredible audio cues as frantic traffic zips through town at the beginning, as the alien creatures hurtle onto cars and clearly climb atop them, taking full advantage of the overhead channels where it absolutely makes sense and only enhances the scene's dynamics. Car crashes strike here and there and then the track drops to dead silence to reflect Regan's hearing loss. The film plays with this sort of high energy to near silence juxtaposition throughout. When it's quiet, it's literally whisper quiet, with extremely light ambience all that is standing between dead silence (and dead characters, for that matter). When it's on, it's intense, with powerful music, plenty of surround action, quality subwoofer output, deep gunshots, piercing screams, and so on and so forth. It's all very well placed, balanced, and detailed, characteristics that also extend to dialogue. Audio engineering and home delivery don't get much better than this.

A Quiet Place Part II Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of A Quiet Place Part II includes several featurettes. A digital copy code is included with purchase.

• Director's Diary: Filming with John Krasinski (1080p, 9:38): Building a sequel, story and themes, shooting locations, technical details and stunts, editing, and more.
• Pulling Back the Curtain (1080p, 3:47): Looking at some story elements, followed by a discussion of the creatures featured in the film.
• Regan's Journey (1080p, 6:19): Exploring Regan's character: where she was and where she is in this movie. It also offers some basic film details and story element explorations.
• Surviving the Marina (1080p, 5:00): Exploring filmmaking details behind the making of one of the film's key sequences.
• Detectable Disturbance: Visual Effects and Sound Design (1080p, 8:26): Looking at some of the key audio/visual elements that make the film work.

A Quiet Place Part II Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A Quiet Place Part II is every bit as intensely draining and cinematically well executed as its predecessor. The lone "drawback" is that it isn't quite so novel as the original, but Krasinski's ability to maintain focus, adhere to the successful style, continue the story, and push the franchise forward all make this a terrific sequel and so far one of the best films of the year. Paramount's Blu-ray delivers several extras in addition to solid video and spectacular audio. Very highly recommended.