MovieChat Forums > A Quiet Place Part II (2021) Discussion > Decent sequel but why so anticlimatic?

Decent sequel but why so anticlimatic?

posted 3 years ago by pelosfx (136)
20 replies | jump to latest

On the whole, I liked it, but I don't get why so many scenes felt rushed or, at the very least, unnecessarily short.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The scene with the savages:no build-up at all. It's over before you can even blink. They don't give the viewer enough time to hate the captors and the payoff is ruined.

The kid discovering Emmet's mummified wife: no relevance whatsoever. It would have made sense if it explained why Emmet wasn't to be trusted, but ultimately he's a sane, compassionate character throughout the whole film. That's why I'm saying it felt like scenes were too short or directly missing.

Once on the island: everything escalates too quickly. Plus, we don't really know how the creatures arrived there. Did they just happen to be on a boat that miraculously got there accidentally?

Maybe the studios wanted to keep costs to a minimum and removed a lot of the film, that's why it feels incomplete at times

[–] asom (6612) 3 years ago

The boat is the exact boat that was at the docks when they got attacked. Sea Star or something like that.
And the creature on top of the boat was looking at them as they sail away ... so the implication is that the creature was smart enough to undock the boat and follow them while piloting the boat?

[–] lebowlmart (7) 3 years ago

In the movie, while the monsters are killing the Dock people two monster chase someone onto a boat, one of them falls off and dies, but the second monster gets stuck on the boat as it floats away.

[–] asom (6612) 3 years ago

Yup, and that’s the boat that reaches the island. How? We don’t know.

[–] PrimeMinisterX (8464) 3 years ago

It seems obvious to me it simply drifted there. We see on the map that the island is large and not very far off from the shore so it's not unbelievable that a drifting boat from the mainland would end up at its shore.

[–] PrimeMinisterX (8464) 3 years ago

Some viewers want everything explained, others don't.

I already hated the savages and was quite happy with the way it was resolved. It was obvious they had bad intentions and Murphy's character knew that it needed to be resolved before they carried the girl away. So he resolved it.

As for the wife, isn't that obvious? He was still so attached to her that he could never bring himself to bury her. Weird? Yes. But not an indicator that he's nefarious or can't be trusted.

The creature--singular--arrived there because he was on the boat and the boat drifted to the island. We saw it on the boat.

Oddly the one way where I thought the film felt incomplete you didn't even mention: The ending is very abrupt. Did Cillian go back and rescue the rest of the family and bring them to the island? I guess the filmmakers are waiting for the sequel to let us know.

[–] pelosfx (136) 3 years ago

You are right about the fact that there's only one creature -singular- that makes it to the island but assuming it did so by just getting on a boat and waiting until it drifted all the way there is suspending disbelief big time. It's obviously not impossible but it's a one in a million chance that happens just hours after the heroes get there. It's a much too convenient plot device that looked cheap in my opinion. As it is also bad writing that something about a character is revealed with no repercussion on the plot (Emmett's wife) Such revelation has to carry more weight necessarily. It's as if in a spy film the viewers found out that the hero is playing both sides but in the end that wouldn't affect the plot; it'd look absolutely ridiculous or, at the very least, quite disconcerting.

As for the ending, indeed, I thought it left too many things unexplained, but I've been more forgiving because there's a third part in the making and answers can be provided

[–] PrimeMinisterX (8464) 3 years ago

Well, they do make the statement at some point in the film that the creatures can't swim. Perhaps once it was on the boat it realized it was properly fucked and it was best to just wait it out and see what happens.

The map that we're shown early in the movie shows that the island is large and not that far away from shore, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that a strong current could carry it out fairly quickly and it would certainly be in the path of the island if that happened. I'll agree that it's convenient, as you say, but it's not impossible and doesn't require an exceptional amount of disbelief.

I see the element with the wife more as something that's supposed to inform the audience--and the characters in the movie--about Cillian's depth of despair than it is something that is supposed to drive the plot forward. That corpse is a symbol of his grief over his lost love.

At least that's how I see it. Maybe in the sequel there will be a line where the boy goes, "Hey mom, did you know he has his wife's corpse just chilling on a slab? Fucking WEIRD!"

[–] howgamer (3744) 3 years ago

I was also happy that the scene with the savages was over quickly. I was hoping they weren't going to go down that route and it resolved quickly which was nice.

One of the things that bugged me was they never had to leave the farm. They had stores of food there and the house was still livable, but I get it, they needed to progress the plot. So they decide well we're leaving and they know they are going off the regular path, but still don't bring shoes. Emmet wears boots the entire time lol.

The fact that Emmett left his dead wife up there in the bed didn't bother me. What bothered me was that they made the kid out to be a complete idiot. He knows everything about this world, but decides it's a good idea to head out on his own and wander a foreign environment with a bum leg instead of waiting a bit longer.

[–] PrimeMinisterX (8464) 3 years ago

I suspect that the reason they left, beyond the house being in bad shape, was simply because man is a social creature. We're not meant to stay cooped up for years with no contact with other human beings. It's the same reason people have been so resistant to coronavirus lockdowns.

We see this same impulse again with the girl when she decides to go find those "beyond the sea." The hope undoubtedly is to be able to eventually be part of a community and start to rebuild society.

As for the kid, I dunno, I just chalked it up to a young boy getting restless and curious.

[–] howgamer (3744) 3 years ago

Well I don't disagree with that, but they left almost immediately. Gathered a few supplies and that was it. I would think that since they now had the capability to kill the creatures, they would have took some time to prepare for the journey. They could also have told Emmet to come back with them since the farm was much better supplied than the abandoned factory.

[–] ATG6 (3000) 3 years ago

Good point. Them landing on the island and seeing people talking and socializing was like coming out of COVID lockdown and going to a baseball game where no one is wearing masks. It's a strange feeling, in a good way.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 3 years ago

What you see as lack of build up, I see as a quick moving film without wasted scenes.

The kid discovering Emmet's mummified wife

This is the very exposition that you were wishing that the movie has. In a quick manuever, the horror movie adds a scary scene that simultaneously serves the role of confirming that he killed his wife, and he was including himself when he told them that the people who are left are not worth saving. This makes it explicit what his character arc is.

Did they just happen to be on a boat that miraculously got there accidentally?

Yes, that's exactly it. I'm glad they only spent ten seconds on this, instead of a random ten minutes of walking around the boat. And we already know these things react quickly. Honestly, it was a surprised it hadn't attacked the whole time; that's my only issue with this scene.

[–] PrimeMinisterX (8464) 3 years ago

Why do you assume from that scene he killed his wife? A corpse just means she was killed, not necessarily that HE killed her.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 3 years ago

It wasn't explicit, but I thought that was the "sure" implication. I can't remember the lines but he was talking about how his wife was sick and stuff. I can't remember if he explicitly referenced her making noise, but he kinda trailed off when it came to her fate. But she didn't die succumb to her illness.

The body itself is completely whole, so she wasn't killed by a monster.

I thought the combination of these details plus his personality was all way for the movie to convey that he killed her because she couldn't be quiet as the sickness took her.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the specific words that made me think this (and later I felt validated when I saw the corpse).

[–] PrimeMinisterX (8464) 3 years ago

I could be wrong, but I think he said something about "staying in the house until she got sick, but then she couldn't stay quiet so we had to come up here."

My impression was that they were trying to continue to live in their actual home, but then he feared she was making too much noise and so took her to a more isolated spot that would be easier to defend.

I understood the body to mean that his attachment to her was still too strong for him to bring himself to bury her.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 3 years ago

Damn, I gotta write this down now for when I eventually rewatch the movie when it comes on streaming. I can't believe I just painted an entire scenario. I'll have to go back with subtitles lol.

[–] PrimeMinisterX (8464) 3 years ago

You got me wondering if I heard correctly, but according to this article:

https://screenrant.com/quiet-place-2-emmett-cillian-murphy-wife-son-explained/

"It's said he brought her to the rail compound because of the screaming pain her illness caused, and he kept her in the sealed chamber where she wouldn't alert the monsters."

The article also says that him keeping her body around "shows that Emmett couldn't stand the loss of his wife so much that he refused to lose her at all, instead keeping her body close even as it wastes away."

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 3 years ago

...hmm I admit, I usually do look at screenrant articles...hmm
Alright, I shall bookmark this thread to revisit this in a few months when i see the movie again.

I actually didn't remember that he selected the compound specifically to hide HER screams. So my interp would be wrong or just an absurd stretch if she was safely screaming in the chamber.

God if that really is the reason, then I might gotta agree with the other guy that that scene was kinda meaninglessly. Sure it shows his love, but I can't say I doubted that without that scene lol

[–] PrimeMinisterX (8464) 3 years ago

Oh, I don't think it's meaningless. As I replied earlier in the thread, I think it's a powerful symbol of his grief and despair over his loss. I'm sure you've heard of the screenwriting rule "show, don't tell." It's one thing for Emmett to express his love for her verbally--and he does--but it's something else entirely to see a rotting corpse that he just can't bring himself to part with because that love was so strong.

[–] howgamer (3744) 3 years ago

I thought it was overall good and entertaining. There were several things that annoyed me, some of what you mentioned, but I did think it was able to build suspense and tension in a lot of scenes.

I think for a sequel I would have like to learn a bit more, but they pretty much just remade the first movie. It was good, but just not as good as the first.

For the third, maybe we'll get the military's perspective with all the backstory of the creatures along with massive explosions and people taking the planet back!