Brace Yourself for A Quiet Place Part II

Writer-director John Krasinski's followup to 2018's "masterful" A Quiet Place arrives in theaters only on Friday, ahead of an expected streaming release this summer, and critics are raving once again. The movie has a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Apart from the first scene, which serves as a prequel, A Quiet Place Part II picks up where the previous film left off, in a world overrun by sound-sensitive aliens—this time, with a newborn baby in the picture. Four takes:

• "I really liked the first Quiet Place and was skeptical Krasinski could top it but I'm here to shout loudly that he has," writes Chris Hewitt at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, describing the sequel as "everything you want a summer horror movie to be." As mother Evelyn Abbott, Emily Blunt can convey a complicated idea with only a facial expression, he writes. Meanwhile, Krasinski is "not afraid to guide the story into a situation that seems impossible to get out of, only to find an ingenious way to do just that."
• "If the first film was purely a story of survival, the sequel is all about discovery" and it's "every bit as good and scary as its predecessor," writes Johnny Oleksinski at the New York Post. Blunt "is a force … especially in moments when her maternal need to protect her kids turns her into a gun-toting superhero." But it's the young actors, Noah Jupe and deaf actor Millicent Simmonds, who really shine, taking their characters "to deeper and braver places."

• For Jeannette Catsoulis, the ending of the first film "was almost perfect, and it could have been enough," she writes at the New York Times. The sequel "sacrifices emotional depth for thriller setups that do less to advance the plot than grow the younger characters," she writes. Still, it's "wonderfully acted and intuitively directed"—"in many respects an exemplary piece of filmmaking."
• "Fixated on upping the ante, and thus pitched at a much higher stress level" than its predecessor, Part II "never lets up," which can be wearying, writes Time's Stephanie Zacharek. She hoped for more "space to breathe"—as she did with the first film. But "Krasinski insists on a gloomy vision of hope, moving his story toward a cymbal-crash of a conclusion that offers at least a slender ray of optimism." And the young actors are "so good," Zacharek adds. With Simmonds' character, "you root for her every minute."

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