A Quiet Place Part II, not so quiet after all

BY ALI NAQVI –

When you think about the idea of a quiet place, it doesn’t take your mind to the world of the outside rather it takes you deep within where no sound can reach, and not even you can hear yourself scream. It is the place we call the unconscious mind or maybe it is the darkest place in the bottomless pit of the human heart. A Quiet Place did not get that philosophical or thoughtful and that’s the reason why it fails to become one of the rare classics in the horror film genera.

It is not easy to find a horror film that one could call classic. There are examples but few and far between. The horror genera since the beginning of cinema is a difficult one to handle for the best of directors. When I heard about the movie A Quiet Place, I was first intrigued by the mere sound of the title which actually meant silence. The idea struck me and I thought it could be the one movie we could categorize in the classics.

But trailers and titles are all deceptive as they say and now I am convinced why. What is that one thing that makes a movie truly horrifying and frightening? From the filmmaking point of view it’s the sound that makes all the difference. A Quiet Place basically missed the whole point. The movie was mostly quiet with hardly any dialogue for most of the time. The sound effects hardly did the job in a movie whose idea was to show quietness.

Recently we have seen the trailer of A Quiet Place Part II directed by John Krasinski. After watching the first one it required courage to even watch the trailer of the second one. Surprisingly the trailer looked promising from the word go. The action packed trailer was good to watch. And guess what, it is the sound that has made all the difference. A Quiet Place Part II seems far more thrilling and suspenseful than its predecessor.

Apart from the quietness of the movie the first part lacked script and a gripping storyline. From the beginning till the end the audience had no clue as to why and what was happening. The monsters were just too sensitive to the sound that meant death and disaster.

In the last few weeks we have seen some interesting trailers. The trailer of Tenet by Christopher Nolan was simply breathtaking to say the least. The upcoming World War 1 thriller 1917 is also a movie to watch out for in 2020.