A Quiet Place Part II: Loud, Empty, and Afraid to Take Risks

A Quiet Place Part II (2020) follows a very simplistic formula: a lot of silence, followed by a lot of whispering, followed by a lot of noise. Lather, rinse, repeat. This gets old really fast, and although I have not watched A Quiet Place, something tells me this is just more of the same. 

With their home destroyed, the family from the first film searches for other survivors. They run into Emmett (Cillian Murphy), who reluctantly leads them to his bunker. There, Marcus (Noah Jupe) and Regan (Millicent Simmonds), Evelyn Abbott’s (Emily Blunt) children, discover the signal of a radio station that continuously plays the song «Beyond the Sea.» Regan determines that it is a clue to guide the survivors to a nearby island. 

That’s just dumb. I mean, Regan is right, and it is a clue; the question is, why does it have to be a clue to a thing instead of the thing itself? Why is it that the person or persons on the other end of the radio have to make a riddle out of it? Why can’t they record a clear and unmistakable message and play that all the time? Something straightforward like, “Safe community on [Island Name]. Follow the signal. You are welcome.” That would make sense in a world where the few remaining humans would be desperate to connect with other survivors. 

Instead, the filmmakers default to the trope of ‘mysterious signal,’ even though the drooling beasts roaming the land are depicted as mindless killing machines incapable of understanding or exploiting human communication. The supposed need for secrecy falls apart under even casual scrutiny. Are the islanders afraid the monsters might… hack the airwaves? Crack the code? Send in spies? The only real threat the film shows besides the creatures is a group of feral humans encountered on the mainland—and there’s no indication the islanders even know these scavengers exist. 

Ultimately, the “clue” feels less like a logical survival tactic and more like a lazy screenwriting shortcut designed to give the protagonists a ‘Eureka!’ moment. It’s a choice that sacrifices narrative coherence for the sake of plot momentum. The film treats the radio signal less like a plausible beacon in a desperate world and more like a puzzle in a scavenger hunt—an approach that strains credibility and reminds the viewer they’re watching a carefully manipulated script instead of a lived-in world. 

The monsters, incidentally, are as competently rendered as a CGI creature may be, but their design is a blatant rip-off of the Demogorgon from Stranger Things. Also, they’re about as dense as the aliens from Signs. 

This derivative design isn’t just lazy—it speaks to a larger problem in modern horror where originality is sacrificed for recognizable aesthetics. The creatures are sleek, menacing, and high-tech looking, but utterly lacking in ecological or behavioral plausibility. There’s no sense of these monsters as part of a functioning ecosystem or evolutionary niche. They are simply predators engineered to terrorize the audience, with zero thought given to how they might survive long term in a world without humans. 

What’s most glaring is the film’s failure to consider the practical implications of these monsters’ existence: What happens after all humans are eaten? The narrative never grapples with this, leaving the creatures as one-dimensional carnivores stumbling blindly across a silent, empty planet. This lack of world-building detail not only diminishes the threat but also renders the film’s apocalyptic scenario hollow. 

Finally, Evelyn’s youngest child subplot recalls the heartbreaking MASH finale moment, where Hawkeye is on a bus full of refugees threatened by a North Korean patrol. A woman’s chicken won’t stop clucking, so Hawkeye urges her to silence it; later, the audience learns he’d repressed the memory that it wasn’t a chicken, but a baby that was suffocated to save everyone. It’s a gut-wrenching, morally complex scene that embodies true narrative risk—a painful choice reflecting the horrors of war and survival. 

By contrast, A Quiet Place Part II shies away from such difficult emotional stakes. The film has a similar opportunity with Evelyn’s youngest child to explore genuine vulnerability, sacrifice, or moral ambiguity, but it instead opts for safety and predictability. This avoidance betrays co-writer/director John Krasinski’s unwillingness to push the franchise beyond surface-level thrills and familiar beats. Rather than challenging audiences with uncomfortable truths or darker themes, Krasinski keeps the story locked within a formulaic framework of silence, suspense, and jump scares. 

Where MASH’s finale confronts trauma head-on, forcing the viewer to reckon with the cost of survival, A Quiet Place Part II chooses the easier path—a safe, sanitized narrative that ultimately feels cowardly. Krasinski may have the skills to craft tension and atmosphere, but he lacks the narrative boldness to take meaningful risks that could elevate the film beyond genre cliché. 

Works Cited 

“Goodbye, Farewell and Amen.” MASH*, season 11, episode 16, directed by Burt Metcalfe, written by Alan Alda, CBS, 28 Feb. 1983. 

A Quiet Place Part II. Directed by John Krasinski, performances by Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy, Millicent Simmonds, and Noah Jupe, Paramount Pictures, 2021. 

Signs. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, performances by Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, Touchstone Pictures, 2002. 

Stranger Things. Created by The Duffer Brothers, performances by Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, and David Harbour, Netflix, 2016–present. 

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