By A Quiet Place is a super great movie that deserved all the praise and success it received last year. We even gave it our coveted Golden Cage for best horror movie! But such success always comes with a sinister caveat–sequels.
It’s been known for a while now that A Quiet Place was going to become something of a franchise (ugh), and I’ve since been worried that the series would tackle the one thing I really don’t want it to: how this whole alien-spider-invasion-thing happened. It’s a tantalizing question that should absolutely remain a question forever. Magic tricks are only magical when you’re left to wonder how they’re done, and origin stories are the same as that mask magician who ruined fun for everyone in the 90’s.
This feels especially prescient for A Quiet Place where every single idea leans on a constant sense of wonder that suspends your disbelief. You start tugging on that thread, and there’s no going back. But according to Bryan Tyree Henry (who will be in the film in a still-unknown role), A Quiet Place 2 is looking to pull this whole sweater apart.
“I think that we’re also going to get a few answers to the origin of where and how this whole thing happened. I think that people want to know that. But I think you’re just going to see another side of it…more of humanity that survived this thing in this next story,” he said. A few answers might be fine, but let’s not dig in.
Something that Annihilation understood beautifully was that sometimes the best answer is “I don’t know.” It opens up discussions and theories whether scientific or symbolic. It allows people to think about these concepts and continue to internalize the movie long after they’ve seen it. That’s one of the most exciting things about all art, the sense of wonder it creates. Henry states that “people want to know,” but I’d argue that just because people have the question doesn’t necessarily mean that they actually want an answer. Sometimes just having the question is enough.
People also have questions about how sleep-farts haven’t killed everyone on Earth by now. If we’re getting answers to the first question, we’d better get answers to this one, as well.
This is all coming from someone who doesn’t believe any sequel to A Quiet Place is a good idea, though. It worked as an interesting parable and a novel gimmick for a surprisingly effective horror movie. I also didn’t care for its ending, which essentially set up a sequel. Maybe I’m just not seeing the potential, but one great movie can stand up forever while a crappy franchises tend to drag down the fantastic films that started them off. I can’t help but fear that five years from now the words A Quiet Place will elicit little more than eye-rolls and sighs.
Only time will tell, though, and I’d be happy to be wrong on this one. A Quiet Place 2 will shush theaters everywhere on March 20, 2020.
Yes, A Quiet Place 2 Will Go Into The Monsters’ Origin [CinemaBlend]
