A QUIET PLACE PART II

 Emily Blunt     Millicent Simmonds     Cillian Murphy     Noah Jupe     Djimon Hounsou

            Part II follows along nicely from the first one, although I don’t think the first one really warranted a sequel.  The vignettes from the previous one were helpful.  And certainly the eeriness of the silence punctuated with loud squawking of the monsters is even more effective this time.  It produced a number of jumps and convulsive gasps on my part.  

            Evelyn (Blunt) and her three children are trying to survive after the destruction of their farmhouse.  The oldest, Regan (Simmonds) is deaf, but eminently resourceful and brave.  Poor Marcus (Jupe) gets his foot caught in a trap early on, giving him excruciating pain and risk of infection.  Not only that, he has asthma, which presents an additional challenge.  The baby is still an infant in his mother’s arms, and his cries are a major threat.  It stretches plausibility that their bundling him up in a box with oxygen pumped in could be effective, but…  I went with it.  (The monsters are blind, but their sense of hearing is acute; hence, the need for absolute silence.)

            Mother and children run across an old friend, Emmett (Murphy) who is far from welcoming because of the scarcity of resources.  He is grieving the loss of his family, and Evelyn has to use guilt-inducing strategies even to stay one night.  The story gets more complicated when Regan insists on going to a place she is sure will save them and sneaks off, but Emily insists Emmett go find her and bring her back.  She also needs to go out to get medicine and oxygen for Marcus.  Each of these ventures are harrowing.

            Some relief from the tension is provided when Regan’s speculations pan out, after she and Emmett meet a character played by Djimon Hounsou, but only after a dangerous encounter that almost kills them.

            John Krasinski, who was writer/director and a major actor in the first Quiet Place, and as writer/director here, is a master of timing and sequencing to get the most out of suspense and horror.  However, he like so many other directors and editors now, love frequent cuts back and forth between scenes.  It makes me dizzy, and I resent having to try to figure out over and over again where I am in following the story.  I see absolutely no benefit to this practice.

            The ensemble cast in A Quiet Place Part II is superb, starting with Emily Blunt, who has earned her place as a top-notch star numerous times (The Adjustment Bureau, Edge of Tomorrow, The Devil Wears Prada, A Quiet Place).  Millicent Simmonds as her hearing-impaired daughter is a rising star (Wonderstruck, A Quiet Place), as is Noah Jupe (Honey Boy) playing her son.  Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou as experienced actors in numerous films play their roles here perfectly.  It may be a high point in Murphy’s career.

 

A Quiet Place Part II is successful in producing jumps and gasps during a true horror show.

 

Grade:  B                              By Donna R. Copeland

A QUIET PLACE

Emily Blunt     John Krasinski     Noah Jupe     Millicent Simmonds     Cade Woodward

     This is a very quiet place, necessarily, because acutely hearing monsters might hear and attack wherever human sound is coming from.  It took a while for the audience to settle down, but before long, it was the quietest movie theater I’ve ever been in, which is a measure of just how much tension and apprehension the film elicits in the audience.  It’s clear from the beginning that there has been some kind of holocaust; there are few people around, stores have been wrecked, and the characters we see use sign language.

     The Abbott family (father, mother, daughter, and two sons) is appealing, and they’re able to communicate a great deal with sign language and visual cues. Evelyn (Blunt) is nurturing and fun with her family, doing household chores and home-schooling the kids. And one of your first questions is how she is going to keep a newborn quiet, because she is pregnant. Lee (Krasinski) is intelligent, and he and Emily seem to have thought of everything—well, almost everything—in preparing for eventualities and training their children about what to do. In addition, he spends much time in his workshop trying to get as much information as possible about the monsters and find their vital weakness.  The three children, daughter Regan (Simmonds), Marcus (Jupe), and Beau (Woodward) are typical in their propensity for play and unpredictability, as well as their desire to help.   Regan has a special burden to bear because of something that happens early on in the story.  They are all so appealing, it’s easy to care about what happens to them.

     Krasinski’s directing is something he will be proud of, in its story line (on which he collaborated with Bryan Woods and Scott Beck), the development and pace of the plot, and the selection of the cinematographer Charlotte Bruus and musician Marco Beltrami.   Much of the film is beautiful to watch, with the surreal experience of quietness as the family walks around barefoot, sometimes through the corn fields and woods in full color, punctuated by rushing waters, static in electrical and computer devices (and even in a hearing aid), and the alarming sound of monsters (gorgeously and ghoulishly designed by Industrial Light and Magic) as they groan, trying to find the source of a sound or swoosh in loudly for a kill.  

     Both Emily Blunt and her real-life husband John Krasinski show their talents in acting that conveys so much information nonverbally.  Millicent Simmonds (Wonderstruck) is admirably expressive, and in this role brilliantly shows Regan’s complexities in her hearing impairment (which is real for Simmonds), her unequivocal love for her brothers, her ambivalence toward her parents, and her feelings of guilt, suspicion, and rage toward her father.  

     All the different special effects and production design (Jeffrey Beecroft) in A Quiet Place are noteworthy, especially for a horror film, which knows to reveal the physical appearance of the monsters only gradually.  For much of the first part of the film, they’re only heard, not visible, which heightens the fear factor.  But then, when they’re fully seen, they are fascinating and disgusting at the same time.

     As one who is not an aficionado of horror movies, I found this one to be thoroughly engaging, parsing out the horror in believable—not too fantastic—premises and scenes.  I could have done without the ill-conceived pregnancy and birth of a baby (although this amazing couple even planned that out very carefully.)  

A Quiet Place is deceptive in its title, as an unspeakable horror where sounds can destroy you and your family.

Grade:  A-                                    By Donna R. Copeland

WONDERSTRUCK

Julianne Moore     Oakes Fegley     Millicent Simmonds     Jaden Michael

Cory Michael Smith     Tom Noonan     Michelle Williams

       Unless you’ve read Brian Selznick’s work on which Todd Haynes based this film, plan to spend a fair amount of time trying to make sense of the plot and learning who the characters are.  Screenwriter Selznick actually does capture the model in his book in telling two different stories, one about a girl in 1927 and one about a boy in 1977.  I might say from the beginning that I’m not a fan of this model of storytelling; it takes more work than simply listening and seeing the story unfold.  Nevertheless, the book’s reviews are very positive, and most readers do find the exposition charming.

     The film opens when Ben (Fegley) is having one of his nightmares, and his mother (Williams) comes in to comfort him.  The next thing we learn about Ben is that he has intense curiosity about his father, but his mother insists on withholding that information “until the right time.”  When she is never able to give it, Ben takes it upon himself to follow some clues he has about the father’s whereabouts, and proceeds to go find him.  Keep in mind that he is going to be traveling from Minnesota to New York City, and just recently became deaf, so he doesn’t know sign language or lip reading.

     Ben’s story and that of Rose’s (Simmonds) are interwoven, hers in wordless black and white pictures from the 20’s, and the other in full color taking place in the ‘70’s.   There are numerous coincidental experiences each has, but the mystery of their connection is revealed only in the very last part of the film.  Rose is growing up in Hoboken, N.J., the child of divorced parents.  Her mother is a famous stage actress (Moore) in New York, but Rose lives with her father, a very stern, unemotional doctor who scolds her frequently.  She runs away to try to find her mother, despite the fact that she, like Ben, is deaf, and is mute as well.  The absence of sound in her story reflects not only the silent movies of the time, but as well her being born deaf and, consequently, mute.

     The two young actors ably carry the bulk of the film, along with some fine help from Jaden Michael, who plays a friend Ben makes at the Museum of Natural History.  Fegley, proving his skills first in Pete’s Dragon and some other minor roles, is captivating here in his earnestness and persistence.  Millicent Simmonds is a worthy counterpart with her luminous, expressive face and eyes, playing a role about which she has had direct experience in her own deafness.  In Julianne Moore’s two roles, she expresses a sample of the range of her abilities.

     Although I do regard Todd Haynes as a highly skilled director, I found some drawbacks in this production.  In addition to the fractured story-telling, it was difficult to follow sometimes simply because the notes that characters were writing to one another were presented to the audience so rapidly one didn’t have time to read them, and/or the they were dark or obscured by another object.  To me, it was an omission not to have shown Rose’s parents or Ben’s family trying to find out where they were. 

     Wonderstruck requires a certain amount of patience to sit through it, but if the viewer is impressed with Haynes earlier pictures such as Far From Heaven and I’m Not There; and Brian Selznick’s books (Hugo and Wonderstruck), this film is likely to be entertaining. 

Two stories from the ‘20s and the ‘70s interweave to tell a story of remarkable coincidences.

Grade:  C                                    By Donna R. Copeland