Expect jolts. Surprise? Not so much

   I suppose it makes twisted sense that the first film I've seen with an audience since the start of the great Covid pandemic is a sequel, namely A Quiet Place Part II. 

   Sitting in a multiplex with a state-of-the-art auditorium, I felt an alarming sense of deja vu. Rather than feeling elated about returning to the theatrical experience, I felt as if nothing had changed in more than a year.

    I wanted renewal. I got more of the same — which makes a decent lead-in to the review of Part II.

   Director John Krasinski follows the unexpected success of the 2018 original with a movie in which the technical achievements -- the use of sound in a story about  ferocious  aliens with heightened hearing abilities  -- built unnerving levels of  suspense. 

    In case you've forgotten, another reminder: The Quiet Place aliens respond to noise. Make a sound and they'll hunt you down faster than you can switch from here to another Web site.

   And, no, I'm not suggesting you try that.

  In the first outing, Krasinski concocted a movie in which waiting -- the simple act of having to be silent -- crackled with suspense and we marveled at the ingenuity required for a mother and father (Krasinski and his real-life wife Emily Blunt) to save their family.

    Now,  the attacks and their attendant noise constitute the main event: Noises trigger the attacks which proceed with fury and lots of of flashing teeth and claws. In 2021, the aliens are more than ready for their close-ups.

    Fans of the first installment also remember that Krasinski's character died in that movie. Perhaps to serve as a refresher, Krasinski opens Part II with an action-filled prologue in which he appears.

    Fast and efficient, the prologue gets things off to an ominous start, introducing a couple of major characters whose issues echo throughout.

    As a kid whose Little League game is interrupted by an alien invasion, Noah Jupe's Marcus must overcome a quivering lack of confidence. Millicent Simmonds portrays Marcus's sister Regan, a teenager who can't hear but who has enough smarts and courage to see things through.

    Once the opening fades, Krasinski leaps ahead to the time when Blunt's character, her three children (one still an infant) are on the run without their late father to help. Most of the pre-invasion world has fallen into that most sacred of movie territories, wanton disrepair.

   This is not to say that Krasinski totally succumbs to second-movie fatigue. The set pieces -- Regan entering an empty (wanna bet?) train car and Blunt racing toward safety carrying oxygen tanks -- are effectively tense. If you like jump scares, you won't be short-changed.

   The story derives most of its momentum from a plotline in which Regan attempts to find a safe harbor for her family. 

   She's joined by a former neighbor. Emmett (a bearded Cillian Murphy) reluctantly offers the wandering Abbott family shelter before joining Regan in a search triggered by a clue: a perpetual broadcast of Bobby Darin's Beyond the Sea. 

    Could it be a message about a place the aliens have yet to reach?

    Putting the movie's characters into separate story arcs doesn't always pay off.  A cross-cutting series of sequences that shifts between Jupe and Simmonds has a pro-forma quality about it and the movie's ending feels as if someone simply decided it was time to go home.

     Part II probably will make some noise at the box office and may encourage conversation about the ways in which a movie about disruptions to normal life resonates during the time of Covid. 

     I was jolted. I felt some of the more suspenseful moments but I wish I could tell you that in its fleet 97 minutes, Part II approached the surprise level of the original.

     Like the aliens that attack suddenly and at warp speed, Part II moves quickly but leaves little in its wake. Adding nothing much by way of depth or discovery, Part II feels more like an encore than a great sequel. 

      

      

     

Yikes! A truly effective chiller

In A Quiet Place, you'll find both shock and horror.

Movies have taken us to hundreds of shattered worlds in which people suffer in the aftermath of a great catastrophe. A Quiet Place falls into that hoary category but brings a startling new effectiveness to the genre.

Directed, co-written by and co-starring John Krasinski, A Quiet Place teams Krasinski with his real-life wife Emily Blunt. Together they conduct an exercise in terror and suspense that proves riveting.

Krasinski knows how to deliver jolts, but for once, they're not inflicted on stupid characters who do things that no sane person would attempt, an obligatory trip into a darkened basement, for example. Put another way: the premise may be outlandish but the human behavior in A Quiet Place proves credible enough to ward off groans.

That’s not to say that you won’t find things with which to quibble. It is to say that Krasinski has enough command over the material to create a steady stream of shock and horror.

We’re in a time that looks very much like the present. The difference: Giant bug-like creatures have appeared (the movie wisely doesn’t give the creatures a backstory) and are busy wiping out humanity.

The twist — and it’s just here that the movie acquires much of its power — involves the nature of these monsters. Their form — partially glimpsed at first — suggests vaguely human and distinct monster characteristics. Their gaping mouths can deliver Alien bites, and they move with amazing speed.

These monsters also are blind, locating their prey by following sounds with ears that evidently function with radar-like precision.

That means everyone in the movie must remain silent or be eaten alive. The quiet works to enhance the suspense.

As parents living on a farm in upstate New York, Krasinski and Blunt play characters intensely devoted to protecting their two surviving children (Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe). Because Simmonds' character is deaf, the family knows how to sign. This may give them a leg up on the monsters; the parents and kids can communicate without speaking. (Subtitles translate the signed dialogue.)

Krasinski builds his movie around a couple of major set pieces. In one of them, Blunt’s pregnant character goes into labor under the most harrowing circumstances imaginable. In another, Jupe's character falls into a silo, nearly suffocating under the weight of the stored grain.

The cast members do a good job conveying anxiety and fear and there are touches that make you wince -- albeit in ways that are both contrived and harrowing. At one point, Blunt’s character steps on a nail. Our stomachs tighten because the last thing she can do is cry out in pain.

A Quiet Place may be a little short of emotional and thematic resonance but Krasinski doesn’t shortchange the kind of moments that may find you tightly gripping the arms of your seat. A Quiet Place is the kind of movie that can cause a stir in audiences as everyone jumps, winces and exhales in unison. Enjoy.

Dysfunctional family, dysfunctional movie

Somewhere in the movie called The Hollars, a good family story might be hiding. Unfortunately, director John Krasinski, who also plays the lead role, didn't find it. This story of a dysfunctional Ohio family centers on the discovery that Mom (Margo Martingale) has a brain tumor. Dad (Richard Jenkins) can't stop weeping. One of the family's grown sons (Sharlto Copley) is mired in on-going tension with Dad, whose heating business verges on bankruptcy. Krasinksi plays the family's other son, the kid who left town to establish himself as an artist in the big city. Lest any stone of complication be left unturned, Krasinski's John Hollar and his girlfriend (Anna Kendrick) are expecting a baby. Sincere in its sentiments and including a few touching scenes, The Hollars nonetheless presents a symphony of false notes that even a cast featuring the wonderful Martingale and Jenkins can't bring into tune.

No dramatic bounty in 'Promised Land'

Credit Matt Damon, who co-wrote the new movie Promised Land with actor John Krasinski, for tackling a difficult subject. Too bad, Damon and Krasinksi didn't come up with a stronger, more credible script for their movie about issues facing a small rural town when a natural gas company starts dangling major money for fracking rights.

Granted, it's difficult to make a dramatic feature about a subject as controversial and complicated as fracking, but the details in Promised Land don't always compute and a less-than-credible late-picture plot twist limits the movie's power.

Promised Land reunites Damon with director Gus Van Sant, who directed Good Will Hunting (1997), a movie that won screenwriting Oscars for Damon and his then partner Ben Affleck. Van Sant also directed Gerry (2002), a movie that Damon wrote with Casey Affleck and Van Sant.

This time, Damon -- who has appeared in all the movies he's written -- plays Steve Butler, a representative for a natural gas company. His assignment: buying drilling rights from economically stressed farmers. On the verge of a major promotion, Steve is one of the company's best closers, a guy known for achieving success while offering farmers rock-bottom prices. Needless to say, Steve doesn't say much about dangers posed by fracking.

Steve's success stems from his ability to relate to farmers. He grew up on an Iowa farm, and understands that most small farmers are struggling to make ends meet. He views his company's offers as a kind of salvation for farmers -- and, to the movie's credit -- there's some truth in Steve's pitch. Why should farmers sacrifice the future of their families for some romanticized, and in Steve's view, misplaced loyalty to the land?

Steve plies his trade with a down-to-earth partner (an underutilized Frances McDormand), a good-humored, no-nonsense woman for whom the work is just that -- a job, a way to support her son and earn a living. An eye-on-the-ball gal, McDormand's Sue doesn't waste time entangling herself in moral issues.

All seems to be going well for these representatives of Global Gas in their latest assignment until a town meeting at which a high-school science teacher (Hal Holbrook) raises questions about dangers associated with fracking. Holbrook's Frank Yates also wonders whether the promised rewards aren't being exaggerated.

Damon, Krasinksi and Van Sant have a feel for small-town life in an agricultural community and for how reps for a natural gas company might operate. When Steve and Sue arrive in town, they stop at a local store to buy clothing that they hope will make them look more like the town's residents.

But the movie falters when it comes to other details and perhaps even in the way Damon's character develops. First off, I found it difficult to believe that a born-and-bred Iowa farm boy such as Steve wouldn't know how to strive a stick-shift car; the movie uses Steve's difficulty with stick shifting as a running joke.

And when an environmentalist (Krasinski) shows up to warn the townspeople that fracking can result in dead live stock and poisoned land, the movie starts to feel contrived.

Obviously, the script builds toward a crisis of conscience for Steve, but that, too, stuck me as a stretch. This isn't Steve's first rodeo. You'd think he already would have worked out any moral issues stemming from the work he does. He seems a little too naive.

Are we supposed to believe that Steve begins to see new light because he meets an appealing woman in town (Rosemarie DeWitt)? Or is he thunderstruck when he receives revealing new information about the mammoth company that employs him? Maybe he never entirely abandoned his farm-boy roots.

You get the picture. Good intentions don't always make for a good movie, and although Promised Land captures some of the informalities of small-town life and, commendably, tries to find a bit of balance, it falls short both as a character study of a conflicted oil rep and as an expression of agitated social conscience.