It’s rare to see a sequel in the horror genre that is as good if not better than the first movie in the series. As much as I enjoyed A Quiet Place, the sequel is just as good. It’s also unusual to see a horror movie that can be provide scares and chills without the use of gore, and in general is family friendly. In fact, this is the first horror movie that my entire family went to see in the movie theater (and our first since the start of the pandemic).
What A Quiet Place II has in abundance is tension. From the opening scene, which is a flashback to day one of the apocalypse and one of the best scenes in the entire movie, where they introduce the invasion of the creatures, to the following scene where the family is fleeing from their home with a baby in tow, all the way to the chilling ending, the movie had tremendous tension throughout. It doesn’t rely on cheap scares or blood and guts to deliver this, and it doesn’t even rely on dialogue.
What I also enjoyed about this movie are some of its central themes—faith, family, and community—things that are important especially in the most dire of circumstances. To me, the most tense scenes in the movie involved the baby, which added an incredible quandry to an already dire situation just trying to survive against these creatures. This is a movie that lived up to my expectations, and I highly recommend it.