Does Anyone Want "A Quiet Place 2" in the Middle of the Pandemic?
Post-apocalyptic movies should wait until we get through this actual apocalypse.
Can you imagine a world in which normal human activity has halted?
Stores stand empty and abandoned. If you have to go outside for a supply run, you do so with caution and preparation, ever aware that one false move could expose you to the deadly, mysterious entity that is constantly stalking humanity?
What's that? You don't have to imagine it? That's literally what life became a year ago, and things still haven't gone back to normal?
Well in that case, maybe you're not in the mood for a bit of "escapist" sci-fi horror based on that concept. Well, don't tell that to John Krasinski and Paramount, who just decided to push up the September theatrical release date of A Quiet Place Part II to Friday, May 28th, in time for Memorial Day weekend.
The sequel/prequel to 2018's A Quiet Place, starring Krasinski and his wife, Emily Blunt, was originally scheduled to premiere last March. And before COVID hit, people were excited by the trailer showing snippets of the weird sound-creatures first attacks — hinting at all the confusion, chaos, and fear as people struggled to grasp this new threat destroying their society.
It's an intriguing and frightening concept from the comfort of ordinary life. But when you're living inside a pandemic, it kind of sounds like picking at a fresh scab.
Krasinski had great success in the early days of COVID by creating a YouTube series called Some Good News, which was a sort of casual, low-budget outlet for sharing feel-good news stories. But he then came under fire from fans who saw it as a betrayal when he sold the concept to ViacomCBS for a (presumably) huge sum of money. Is this new release date another tone deaf move?
While it lasted, Some Good News was a nice distraction from the onslaught of horror that the real world was churning out. And maybe by the time September rolls around, we will collectively have moved on from the apocalyptic stuff we've been living through, and be ready to invest in an apocalyptic fantasy. But May is just too soon.
The US isn't expected to have enough vaccines for all adults until sometime this summer. And while much of the country has been reopening restaurants and movie theaters — and Texas has even eliminated their mask mandate — we're not actually out of the woods yet. Not even close.
Our ability to treat infections has vastly improved, and hopefully it won't be long before the majority of people in high-risk categories are inocculated. But we are still getting ahead of ourselves.
In addition to the proliferation of new, potentially deadlier, more contagious, or more vaccine resistant strains — as a direct result of previous recklessness spreading the virus — even the more familiar forms of COVID are far from fully understood. There are frightening long-term effects still being studied, and thousands of cases of otherwise healthy adults, and even children being killed by COVID.
In December, 41-year-old Luke Letlow died just days before he was set to take office as the U.S. representative for Louisiana's 5th district. In January former Pittsburgh Steelers fullback Tim Lester died of COVID at 52. And back in November, 14-year-old Honestie Hodges — who became a symbol for police reform at age 11, following the release of video showing Michigan police violently arresting her while looking for a middle-aged white woman — died of COVID, despite having no known underlying conditions.
Had they survived, would any of those people have been vaccinated by now? And those are just the people who were prominent enough to make the news.
So why are we acting like large indoor gatherings no longer represent a threat to public safety? Why is New York City, which was so ravaged by COVID last spring, already reopening movie theaters? Why are movies even having theatrical releases?
If we're lucky, the next two months will make a big difference, and by late May it won't seem so reckless to pack a bunch of strangers into an auditorium to take off their masks for the sake of popcorn. With the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine recently approved alongside Moderna and Pfizer's shots, the process of achieving herd immunity can hopefully accelerate, and we can start to responsibly return to pre-COVID life.
But that doesn't mean we immediately want to start revisiting the trauma of living in a horror movie. Give us some time to reacquaint ourselves with the outside world before you expect us to see movies about being holed up inside to survive.
Better yet, just release it digitally, so you don't risk prolonging the actual apocalypse for the sake of your pretend one.