When John Krasinksi’s A Quiet Place came out, it was immediately a huge success. It wasn’t a silent film, but it was revolutionary in the way that dialogue was secondary to story. In other words, A Quiet Place took the old film adage of “show; don’t tell” to another level. It was so successful that a sequel was ordered almost right away, and A Quiet Place Part II replicates the success of the original in a way that most sequel can never do.
Throughout both films, Krasinksi did a great job of keeping his viewers on the edges of their seats. From the classic horror film jump scare to a deeper, overarching feeling of angst, A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II can be terrifying movies at times. However, that almost automatically begs the question of which film is scarier -- the original or the sequel? So, here’s a breakdown of the scariest parts of both films and a verdict on which is the scariest.
One of the scariest parts of A Quiet Place is in the film’s opening minutes. The Abbott family is in a drug store looking for medicine for Marcus when little Beau finds a toy rocket. From the moment that he nearly drops the toy, it seems inevitable that it will cause trouble for him. His father tells him to leave the toy there, but Regan gives it back to him. What no one sees is Beau also grabs the batteries, and on the way home, the Rocket lights up and makes noises – prompting the first appearance of the monster and its first on-screen kill.
Another one of the scariest moments in the original film is when Evelyn gives birth in the middle of a monster’s attack on their house. (Things always happen at the worst possible time.) While Lee and Marcus are off finding food, Regan goes off to Beau’s grave. That leaves Evelyn all alone, and of course, that’s when she goes into labor. After dropping a picture frame and alerting the monster to her presence, she has to give birth in a bath tub, alone, with monsters creeping around her house.
The final face off might be the scariest sequence in the film. Although one might suspect that the Abbotts would somehow win the day, that is far from a given. At that point, no plans for a sequel had been announced, so it was feasible – albeit unlikely – that the monster could have wiped them out. Even if the Abbotts did win, that doesn't mean that everyone makes it out alive. Lee had just died, so someone else possibly could have died before Evelyn found a way to blow the monster’s head off.
The opening sequence of A Quiet Place Part II also gives one of the film’s scariest moments. The sequence shows “Day 1” when the monsters first attacked, and when it happens, the Abbot family is at Marcus’ baseball game. As they try and flee, Evelyn, Marcus, and Beau are in their car and have to drive in reverse to frantically avoid an oncoming bus. Meanwhile Lee and Regan run through the streets and try to find a place to hide.
A second moment that is definitely one the scariest in the film is when Marcus steps on the bear trap while he, Evelyn, and Regan are running through a field. His screams of agony seem to spell certain doom for someone in the family. There seems like no way out, but luckily, no one dies because Regan and Evelyn work quickly to kill the monster with their newfound knowledge of its weakness.
Perhaps the scariest moment in the film is when Regan goes into the abandoned train. She is trying to find medical supplies for Marcus’ leg, but going inside there just seems like a bad idea from the get go. There are to many things that could go wrong and too many things that could make noise inside the train. Sure enough, its not long before the monster is there to attack and Regan needs rescuing.
While both movies are successful, the first A Quiet Place film is the clear winner in the battle for title of the scariest for two reasons. First, it goes without saying, but since it’s the first movie, fans don’t know what’s happening. They have to figure everything out scare-by-scare as the film progresses. It wasn’t until the closing minutes of the movie that the characters finally found a weakness for the monster. That means that the audience spent the entirety of the film thinking the monsters were unstoppable. That’s much scarier than over-analyzing characters' bad decisions, which was kind of the theme of the second movie.
The second reason that A Quiet Place is the scarier film is kind of a practical point. When the first movie was in theaters, there were no immediate plans for a sequel. That means that anyone or everyone could have died in the first film – keeping viewers on the edge of their seat. When the second instalment came out, it had already been announced that there were plans for A Quiet Place to be its own franchise. That means that only so many people can die, and the audience can automatically watch with less inherent fear.
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