John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place 2 takes the Abbott family into the wider world of the apocalypse directly after the first movie, while also repeating several key moments from A Quiet Place. The sci-fi horror movie series A Quiet Place follows the Abbott family of Lee, Evelyn, Regan, and Marcus in a post-apocalyptic world where alien monsters of ambiguous origins are attracted to sound. The Abbotts are able to quickly adjust to this silent world, as they have extensive knowledge of American Sign Language due to their daughter being deaf. As they better understand the monsters’ weaknesses and adapt to the dangerous and resource-barren world, A Quiet Place 2 ends up putting the Abbotts in many of the same situations as the first film.
Directed by John Krasinski, A Quiet Place 2 picks up directly after A Quiet Place, where viewers last saw Evelyn and Regan kill a monster with a shotgun and hearing aid. After John Krasinski’s Lee Abbott had sacrificed himself in A Quiet Place to save Regan and Marcus, the sequel sees the family looking for safety and other survivors. The Abbotts quickly find Cillian Murphy’s A Quiet Place 2 character Emmett, an old friend of theirs who lost his wife and son, who replaces Krasinski’s deceased character. The rest of the sequel follows Emmett and Regan searching for a radio station on a nearby island, while Marcus and Evelyn care for the baby and fight off monsters in an abandoned factory.
Following an opening flashback scene to the apocalypse’s beginning, A Quiet Place 2 helped to continue the aftermath of the Abbotts story in the wake of the first movie’s ambiguous ending, while also adding to the lore and rules of the apocalypse. As the Abbotts venture into the world, they discover the A Quiet Place aliens’ weakness that they can’t swim, survivors better avoid monsters on an island, and Regan’s hearing aid can be broadcast on the radio to help kill monsters. While A Quiet Place 2 served its purpose with new worldbuilding, character development, and suspense, the sequel repeated plenty of tropes and moments from the original movie – sometimes for dramatic symbolic effect, and sometimes simply to rehash iconic events from the first film.
Opening Scene At The Convenience Store
A Quiet Place 2 opens with a flashback to Day 1 of the apocalypse, showing John Krasinski’s Lee as he picks up oranges from the market to bring to Marcus’ baseball game. Only minutes later would an asteroid appear in the sky and bring A Quiet Place’s alien monsters. A Quiet Place 2‘s opening scene at the town’s convenience store directly mirrors the beginning of A Quiet Place, which sees the Abbott family getting supplies from the same store post-apocalypse. The parallel of these two scenes is extremely important, as it underlines the stark contrast in their lives pre- and post-apocalypse.
Monster Death By Hearing Aid Ending
One of the best callbacks in the sequel is that A Quiet Place 2’s ending repeats the final scene of the original. A Quiet Place ends with Regan and Evelyn taking on a monster in the basement; Regan uses her hearing aid to stun the alien, while Evelyn shoots it in the head with a shotgun. A Quiet Place 2 ends the same way as a monster attacks Regan and Emmett on the island while another attacks Marcus and Evelyn in the basement. Similar to the original ending, Regan defeats her monster by blasting her hearing aid on the radio and stabbing it in the head, and Marcus shoots his monster in the head while aiming the hearing aid broadcast. In both A Quiet Place movies, the film ambiguously cuts to black directly after killing the monster, suggesting there could still be more to come.
Evelyn’s Nail Vs. Marcus’ Bear Trap
Perhaps the best-remembered scene from A Quiet Place aside from John Krasinski’s character death, Evelyn accidentally steps on a nail protruding from her stairs. Already in labor with her baby near A Quiet Place‘s ending, Evelyn’s intense pain of having a large nail go through her foot causes her to drop a picture frame she was holding, thus alerting nearby monsters. She covered her mouth so she wouldn’t scream, but this was a moment that made even the strongest viewers cringe in pain. A Quiet Place 2 repeated this painful situation with Marcus at the beginning of the film. Before Evelyn, Regan, Marcus, and the baby arrive at the warehouse and find Emmett, Marcus accidentally steps into a bear trap that severely injures his leg. Only a child, Marcus screams in agony as Evelyn covers his mouth to drown the noise. Evelyn realizes the intensity of his pain and tries to calm him down, but it still alerts monsters to their location. Regan and Evelyn manage to kill the monster, and they shortly find A Quiet Place 2‘s Emmett in the abandoned steel factory.
Evelyn Battles A Monster In Water
Water plays an extremely important role in both A Quiet Place and the sequel, with the natural element allowing for the greatest chance at survival. In A Quiet Place, Lee informs Marcus at running water drowns out loud noises nearby, which gives survivors the best chance to escape the monsters’ radars. After Evelyn has given birth in A Quiet Place, she and the baby take a nap in the basement, but the baby cries and alerts a monster. The alien can’t find the source of the noise but hits a water pipe in the basement, sending rushing water downstairs. Evelyn wakes up in the flooded basement as a monster moves through the water, so she and the baby stay behind a waterfront until the monster leaves. Evelyn’s stand against a monster in the water is repeated for Emily Blunt in A Quiet Place 2, where she is confronted with an alien in the factory right before she can make it to her kids underground. Having just picked up two oxygen tanks, Evelyn makes one explode, which sets off the sprinkler system in the factory. With the running water all around, the monster is confused and Evelyn is able to get to her kids as the underground hideout begins to flood.
Revisiting Beau’s Grave
A Quiet Place originally picks up after the apocalypse has already begun, and the first major death in the movie is that of the Abbotts’ four-year-old son, Beau. He had been killed by a monster directly outside of the bridge that the Abbotts have to cross to get home, which happened when he played with a rocket toy that made noise. The family grieved his death and learned how to better survive in A Quiet Place’s apocalyptic timeline, but Regan felt partially responsible for Beau’s death because she had given him back the toy after Lee had taken it away. However, Beau was the one who put the batteries back in after John Krasinski’s character specifically warned him about their danger. After being angry that she wasn’t invited to go fishing with Lee and Marcus, Regan went back to the bridge and visited Beau’s grave to grieve her younger brother. In A Quiet Place 2, Evelyn has to go back into town to get more oxygen tanks and medical tanks, so she stops at Beau’s grave and mourns her son.
Marcus Cares For The Baby Amidst A Monster Attack
Similar to how A Quiet Place 2 repeated the original movie’s climactic monster death ending, the sequel also reused the scenario in which Marcus takes care of the baby while an alien is attacking. In the first A Quiet Place movie, Marcus is tasked with holding and taking care of the baby in the basement while Evelyn and Regan blast the hearing aid and shoot the monsters with shotguns. Ahead of A Quiet Place 2’s ending, Marcus has to care for the baby alone while Evelyn is fighting a monster upstairs and Regan is fighting a monster on the island with Emmett.
