"A Quiet Place II": Mark is too busy fighting monsters to find a boyfriend

For movie night Friday, we saw A Quiet Place II (2020).  I thought that the original (2018) was about English settlers in 19th century Africa, but actually it features a world destroyed by screeching alien monsters like the demogorgons from Stranger Things.  They are impervious to  bullets, fire, and everything else; they can easily break through metal and rock; and the slightest sound brings them running, so survivors have to be "vewy, vewy quiet." 

About the monsters: we know that they came in spaceships -- there are thousands of them , so there must have been hundreds of spaceships -- but why?   An alien invasion?  It would be a rather inefficient way of clearing the planet of humans.  By accident?  Were they being transported somewhere else?

In the original, the Abbott family has bunkered down on their farm.  Fortunately, teenager daughter Regan is deaf, so they all know sign language.  Mom and Dad (Emily Blunt, John Krasinski) spend their time discussing how much they love each other and having sex.  Then they have a baby (they construct a chest with an oxygen tank to muffle its crying);  Mom's foot is impaled by a nail; Dad dies; the house is destroyed; and Regan discovers that a high-pitched squeal from her hearing aid incapacitates the monsters so they can be shot or speared. All on the same day!

In the Quiet Place II,  Mom, baby, Regan, and teenage son Mark (Noah Jupe) set out to find another safe haven (barefoot: they never heard of mocassins). Even with a monster-incapacitating boom box, they have to be careful: the monsters are lightning-quick, so they might not have time to turn it on.)  

As of the summer of 2022, Noah Jupe is 17 years old, and posting sexy, artsy, somewhat femme photos to his instagram (top photo).

Make that extremely femme.  

They seek refuge with Emmett (Cilian Murphy), whom they knew from before.  Now he's a hardened recluse, living in a bunker in an old factory (with vaults for extra protection), drawing pictures of his dead son and keeping his dead wife's body in  a back room (well, burying her would make too much noise).

Cilian Murphy played a survivor of a zombie apocalypse in 28 Days Later (2002), and gave us a nice view of his butt and penis. Here he's grizzled beyond recognition.  I can't believe that was 20 years ago. Good times.

Now the story divides in two, with heavily contrived cuts that show the two groups in exactly the same situation.

Regan notices that the radio   keeps playing the old Bobby Darin song "Beyond the Sea."  This means that there are survivors near a radio station with no monsters!  But why that song, in particular?  It must be a clue: the monsters can't swim.  We have a safe haven on an island.

Plus, they could go to the radio station and use Regan's hearing aid to incapacitate all of the monsters in the vicinity!

Ok: 1. The monsters are not sentient.  Why not just broadcast your location?  2. No one listening will know what to do.

Regan and Emmett set out for the island.  They need a boat, but the marina is occupied by a band of feral rapist-cannibals led by the Marina Man( Scoot McNairy, left).

Meanwhile, Mom and Mark stay back at the bunker, where Mark is incapaciated by a bear-trap injury. When Mom sneaks out to the town pharmacy to fetch painkillers and more oxygen for the baby's crib, Mark decides to do a little exploring, stumbles across the dead wife's corpse, and yells, attracting a monster.  He grabs the baby and jumps into one of the vaults, but he didn't have time to secure the latch, so they are stuck in there, with the oxygen running out!

Finally Regan and Emmett make it to the island refuge, where survivors live in houses with electricity, have bonfires, play outside, and talk to each other in regular voices: monsters can't swim.  One expects a totalitarian police-state out of The Walking Dead, or maybe a weird cult, but no, they are perfectly nice.  

Reagan and Emmett explain their plan to the leader, Island Man (Djimon Housma), who agrees to take them to the radio station.  But then one of Marina Man's boats drifts to the island with a monster stowaway!  

I'll stop the plot synopsis there.

Beefcake: None.  There are some cute guys in the opening scene, set in a town Little League game the day the aliens land.  Otherwise everyone is grizzled and ragtag, except for Mark (he always looks like he just came from a fashion shoot).

Heterosexism:  Less than in the original.  Here it's mostly men mourning their dead wives.

Gay Characters:  No one expresses any same-sex desire, but Mark doesn't express any desire for anyone.  They could easily have established his heterosexual identity by showing him perusing a girlie magazine, but they don't.  Plus he plays a nurturer, taking care of the baby while Mom's gone.  You could easily do a gay-subtext reading.

My Grade: B