The Trailers
Escape Room Tournament of Champions — I didn’t even know Escape Room was a franchise film, but apparently there are enough of them to have a tournament of champions? Well, can’t be any better or worse than the Saw chapters.
Old (An M. Knight Shymalanmalan film) — I know I’m gonna see it. And I know I’m gonna be mad at the end. I know this. We all know this, because it’s motherfuckin M. Knight Shastamanana. But I’m gonna see it anyway. And you know what, I’m not even mad at Mr Knight because it’s not his fault that we get so hyped up over his movies. It’s those magical movie trailer editors! They’re like gods of negative film. I bet working on an M. Knight Shyymilimi trailer is akin to winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards. And hot damn, do they deliver every time! Too bad M. Knight Sucksalot can’t do the same.
Top Gun Maverick — Really, Tom? What? Couldn’t find a studio to blow millions of dollars producing another high-octane, high-explosive Mission Impossible film? Are fighter planes even cool anymore? Nobody is dog-fighting in the sky these days. You’re essentially teaching a class of future cargo plane and commercial pilots. Modern war is all guided rockets and cyber-terrorism. This is dumb. Why? Why did we make this movie?
Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins — Yes! Give me more, Harsbro! Give me all the G.I. Joe flicks you can shake a Roadblock-weapon at! I don’t know why this franchise is having such a hard time getting off the ground. It’s been 12 years and this is only the third film. Fast and Furious was on their 4th film when Rise of Cobra was released. Their lead actor made four more films and then died before this massive toy company with literally nothing better to do could churn out two more scripts based on already-made content?! C’mon, Hasbro. We’re not going for an Oscar nod here. Just give us some steroided, stereotyped, uniformed badasses and blow some shit up. It’s not that complicated!
The fliQ
I’m not a huge fan of the modern day horror genre. That’s not to suggest that I don’t like scary movies; merely expressing a disappointment in what passes for horror since…oh, the 90s. I recognize that part of my bias comes from growing up. I simply don’t scare as easily as I did when I was a child; but as my asshole big brother and sister will attest, I suffered from an overactive dark imagination which was easy prey for horror films. It was a serious liability growing up in a home where every member of the family from the parents on down were Friday-Nightmare junkies. Freddy and Jason haunted my dreams but through sibling shenanigans, Chuckie hunted me while I was awake… I wonder whatever happened to those “My Buddy” dolls? Hasbro had a good idea there trying to make dolls appeal to boys. Then here comes that little demented psychopath plush puppet to fuck everything up. There’s no way that toy franchise could have survived the release of Child’s Play. I know mine didn’t. RIP motherfucker!
So I’m not a huge fan of horror movies, but I like John Krasinski. I mean, who doesn’t? If you ever watched The Office, then you love John Krasinski. So much so that you will support him in any future endeavor, which, honestly, is the only reason I ever watched the first film, A Quiet Place. Needless to say, when he died in the original, I was ready to throw up my hands and throw in the towels on horror movies all over again! WTF, John?! You get me here just to break my heart?! Really? Fuckin rude.
Thankfully, he redeemed himself with a nice, long, bearded cameo in the opening the scene of the first movie which is, get this, Day 1 of…the creature attack that they never specifically labeled in the first film. So we finally get some answers as to where the hell these things came from, and if you’re like me, that question was in the back of your mind the entire feature length of part one. While I thank Mr Krasinski for both this reveal and his adorable daddy cameo, this actually brings me to first gripe about the film. Don’t worry, there are only two gripes, and they are both minor. All in all, I enjoyed the sequel almost on par with the original. Combined, the two make for a good story, except for this one incongruity with the opening scene.
If you’ll remember at the end of the first movie, mother and daughter had just slain the first Slasher. That’s what I’m calling them because, again, I don’t think they were ever labeled in the first one. Well all the raucous from all that slaying somehow managed to call all the slashers in the vicinity to their location, post-haste. The film ended with the badass look of determination on that cherubic young girl’s face as she wielded her sonic amplifier machine and all the slashers were closing quickly on the cameras outside. The assumption being they were either going to be violently ripped apart in seconds or miraculously conquer these hitherto unassailable, yet surprisingly pretty basic creatures.
Well, naturally, when you get a cliffhanger ending like that and the box office is big enough to produce a sequel, one expects to pick up exactly where you left off. OR, at the very least, jump ahead in time so that our assumption of a miraculous victory can be left to our own imaginations… Well, John discovered a third option in story-telling: forget your previous ending entirely, then write a new one after the misdirection of your long-bearded cameo flashback. The film did in fact pick up exactly where the first one left off; it just completely ignored the fact that there were murderous humanoid knife creatures approaching our protagonists. Instead, when they emerged from the basement mere minutes after double-tapping that toothy razor freak–all was calm, clear and quiet. I can forgive the incongruity, but only because you gave me that cameo, you handsome devil!
My second and final gripe came at the end, and it’s really quite minor, but it kinda plays into my disappointment with modern day horror movies. I like a little ham in my scary movies, it lightens the mood a little so you don’t spiral completely into debilitating fear. But there is a difference between “ham” and bad writing/directing/acting. [small spoiler alert]
At the denouement of the film, our adorable deaf heroine (who seems to be considerably less “deaf” in this movie #sideeye #slightjudgment) makes a grandiose, quite-protracted display of incapacitating the creature as it stalks towards her. At the same time, in a parallel sequence, the hitherto whiney, wimpy brother makes a similarly slow stalk towards his now-prey. The girl’s hammy acting was quite adorable, but given the life-or-death circumstances which she found herself in, it was also unrealistic, uncharacteristic, and thus, unbelievable. Furthermore, and this is really the bigger point, it was quite literally the only moment of exaggerated acting in the whole film, which caught me completely off guard and disconnected me from the entire climax.
I suppose that’s a pretty big #fail but again, I can forgive it because of the extended Djimon Hounsou cameo that they gave us just a few scenes prior. You da man, John. You da man. So all in all, A Quite Place Part 2 is definitely worth a look-see if for nothing else than a little closure on a oringal, nuanced tale of horror.