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A Quiet Place 2 and Unnecessary Sequels
With the release of A Quiet Place on Blu-ray, I got the chance to re-watch it. This second viewing just reinforced the love I had for it after my first viewing. Somehow, I liked it even more the second time around.
(Spoilers to follow)
As I was watching this movie for the second time, I got to thinking about how there is now going to be a sequel. And upon further thought, I realized how much I think a sequel would be a bad idea. I don’t think it would be a bad idea because I didn’t like the first one, or because I don’t think there is anywhere to take the story. It’s because A Quiet Place is a great film that should be allowed to stand on its own.
I’m not the kind of person who thinks a movie will be ruined if a subsequent movie in the franchise isn’t good. I didn’t think that The Last Jedi ruined Star Wars. But I do feel like a self-contained movie should be able to support its own weight and stand alone – even with an open-ended ending.
A Quiet Place did a great job of establishing its universe, characters, and themes in their own self-contained way. This wasn’t a movie about a dystopian future where we start off following a small group of characters before we see them meet others, so the cast can expand. Instead, it sticks to one specific family, follows them the whole time, and barely even alludes to the fact that there could be other survivors.
In fact, there are only three aspects of the movie that suggest other characters: the Lord of the Rings-esque beacons that the father uses, the news clippings in the family’s basement, and the fact that the father and the son literally come across another person – who promptly dies. But other than these three items, it is extremely focused on this family.
Family – and the lengths to which someone will go to protect it – is the central theme in A Quiet Place. That is really what made the film work overall. It wasn’t the scary monster, the tension, or the (awesome) sequence where the mother gives birth with the monster in the house. Instead, it was the core values it presented. When the father dies at the end, the audience cares because of the way his relationship with his daughter has just changed. It hits home because of the way we’ve come to care about the characters. Then, the mother and kids come together by the end, and are prepared to take on whatever comes at them.
This is precisely why a sequel won’t be as powerful. If it follows the same family, it would just disappoint, because of how perfectly the first one ended. Or if it follows a different group of people, then it would just be trying to capture what it had the first time around. A Quiet Place was a concise and focused movie, and that worked to its advantage. A sequel is just unnecessary. But it is something we’re getting, and John Krasinski will still be involved in some fashion. So all that we can do is go to see it and hope for the best.
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