Kieran Quay

I'm not going to lie, I was expecting the standard "sequel that's not quite as good as the original.", but the sheer quality of the writing in the first one made me optimistic. I'm sad to say I was MASSIVELY disappointed with how this one went. Part 1 is in the 9-10 range, one of the best movies of the decade, but this one was a 6 or maybe a 7 to me at best. Not outright bad but even with the sequel curse I was expecting a lot better. The first movie was groundbreaking because it took a simple, one paragraph premise and built a believable world around it: There are invulnerable predators with advanced speed agility and strength that hunt with sound. Humanity has to adapt to that. Sign language becomes invaluable, sources of ambient sound become little safe havens, people stop wearing shoes, and noise distractions become the main source of active defence. One family in a remote house carries out a semi-normal existence, even managing to listen to music with headphones and play games like monopoly with cotton balls but never truly feeling safe. It was a great idea that was executed flawlessly. My expectations were that they would take the same great, simple but compelling premise but that the second one would be more of an adventure/travel horror movie. I didn't expect that a second one could be better than the first, simply because there's really not much to work with in terms of originality once the "family trying to live normally" arc ends. The way the original left off kind of demanded a sequel, but the high-pitched weapon discovery that made the first ending so good detracts a lot of tension from the second, and it was always going to. I actually really enjoyed the first half. The flashback sequence was awesome, and everything up to the point where they meet the bandits (let's just say they're bandits) was more or less the sequel I expected and was genuinely excited for; even though I expected it wasn't going to be QUITE as good. And then we get to one of the most anti-worldbuilding, franchise-ruining twists in modern cinema: The aliens can't swim. THE ALIENS CAN'T SWIM. What an amazing discovery. I guess every single island in the world that an alien meteor didn't fall on is doing okay. Australia, Japan, Madagascar, Greenland.... I don't even know how many countries would be perfectly fine, but there's a lot. Cue the completely formulaic final act, complete with a colony of survivors living happily (but of course everything goes wrong) and the EXACT SAME ENDING AS THE ORIGINAL. Except now, wait, the dog whistle noise is being played through a radio transmitter, so now I guess humanity's really fighting back. Who could have possibly seen that coming? On top of that, the synchronized final struggles flat out multiplied the level of contrivance and killed the suspension of disbelief. The "just in the nick of time, a few more seconds and we'd be dead" moments in the first one worked because the family was in the same place and they were more or less coordinating their survival efforts. The fact that Regan transmits the sound at just the last second before the rest of the family dies is beyond unrealistic. She didn't even know they were in danger at that exact moment. Having luck be a survival element is fine, in fact it even increases the tension when it's done properly, but this was just disappointing. This was the movie I was looking forward to the most this year. It sucks that they decided to go such with a standard hollywood sequel to what was in my opinion one of the greatest, most unique horror movies of all time. Krasinski's a great director, but his writing fell short this time.