A Quiet Place Part II (2020)
★★★ — A Quiet Place Part II (2020)
There's a moment early in A Quiet Place Part II where you feel that familiar grip tighten in your chest. A noise, a flicker of movement, and the creatures arrive with that same horrifying speed. John Krasinski still knows exactly how to coil a scene until it's almost unbearable. The sound design is, once again, impeccable, and for stretches of this film I was genuinely on the edge of my seat. The problem is that I'd been on that exact same edge before, in that exact same way, watching the original. And the original did it better.
I wrote about why A Quiet Place worked so well, and a big part of it was the emotional weight underneath all the tension. The Abbott family's grief, the guilt, the fierce protectiveness of parenthood under impossible conditions. It gave every near-silence something to push against. The scares meant something because the people meant something. Part II has the same people, more or less, and it introduces some interesting new ones, Cillian Murphy chief among them, doing solid, restrained work as a survivor the family encounters beyond the farm. But the emotional architecture just isn't as sturdy this time around.
What Krasinski does here is expand the world outward rather than deepen it. We get glimpses of life elsewhere, of how others have survived or failed to. There's a prologue set on the day the creatures first arrived that's genuinely effective, throwing you right into the chaos with a bravura sequence of escalating dread. It's one of the film's highlights, and it made me wish the rest had that same sense of discovery. Instead, once we're back in the main timeline, the film settles into a more fragmented structure, splitting the narrative across multiple threads as characters head in different directions.
That splitting is where things start to fray. Individually, several of the set pieces are terrific. Millicent Simmonds, in particular, carries a lot of the film's best moments, and she more than holds her own against her more experienced co-stars. But cutting between storylines robs each of sustained momentum. Just as the tension in one thread reaches a fever pitch, we're whisked away to another. It's the kind of structure that can work brilliantly, think of how Mad Max: Fury Road keeps everything hurtling forward simultaneously, but here it dilutes rather than multiplies the intensity.
The formula is all present and correct. Quiet footsteps. Held breath. Sudden noises that make you flinch. Creatures that reward any sound with instant, lethal attention. Krasinski executes all of it with craft and confidence. But craft and confidence aren't quite enough when you're working from a blueprint rather than pushing past it. The freshness that made the first film feel like a genuine event has worn off, and nothing here fully compensates for that. The character arcs feel thinner, the stakes somehow smaller despite the expanded scope, and the ending arrives feeling more like a pause than a conclusion.
None of that makes it a bad film. It's well-made, tense, and on two or three occasions genuinely thrilling. If you loved the first and simply want more of it, you'll probably get enough here to satisfy. But the best sequels don't just replicate, they evolve, they challenge you to feel something new. Part II is a polished echo. The silence still does a lot of the heavy lifting, but this time it's mostly repeating what the original already said, and said more powerfully.
Three stars.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2020 | Watched: 2026-02-11
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Paramount Plus · Paramount+ Amazon Channel
Rent: JustWatch TV · Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Paramount Plus Premium · Paramount Plus Essential · Paramount+ Amazon Channel
Rent: JustWatch TV · Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
Related on Movies With Macca
More from John Krasinski: A Quiet Place (2018)
More with Emily Blunt: A Quiet Place (2018) · Looper (2012)
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More science fiction: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Fantastic Planet (1973) · Nightmare City (1980) · The Long Walk (2025)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)
