There will be mild spoilers for A Quiet Place Part II in this story, so stop reading now if you want to go into the movie as clean as possible.
One of my favorite elements about the two A Quiet Place films to date is how much John Krasinski tries to do practically, and even in camera. Of course, his alien threats are done with CGI when they have to be shown on screen. But Krasinki can wring sufficient tension out of the quiet of his surroundings, or the threat of potential noise, without having to go all in on an effects budget. But one shot from A Quiet Place Part II that is featured heavily in the sequel’s trailer will blow your mind when you learn that Krasinski nailed it in one take… and threw his wife, Emily Blunt, and some kid actors into the deep end.
By now, you may have heard that the sequel A Quiet Place Part II opens up on Day 1 of the alien invasion, which allows John Krasinski to reintroduce the Abbott family and show where they were when everything hit the fan. There’s an incredible stunt sequence structured around Emily Blunt’s character, Evelyn, where she’s driving through the town when a creature lands in front of her. She immediately starts to speed away, but encounters an out of control bus storming towards her. Evelyn throws her own car in reverse, and Krasinki’s camera captures the threat of the bus from the POV of a person in the back seat.
It’s a breathtaking shot… and it’s not a composite. All of that happened practically. John Krasinski was a guest on CinemaBlend’s official podcast, ReelBlend, and he told us:
Emily's (stunt) is so real, I think I put my marriage on the line when I put her in the car. That's true. When I was explaining to her onset all of the things that were going to happen, and I said, ‘You're going to hit this stuntman. That car's going to come three feet from you. And then this bus is actually going to clock at 40 miles an hour,’ her face fell and she went, ‘But not really.’ And I went, ‘No, no, the bus is coming at you at 40 miles. That's a real bus. And that bus hits that car, and all that is totally real.
That’s insane. But I can understand you guys thinking that Emily Blunt has to be totally cool with this. I mean, she was the “Full Metal Bitch” in the action-paced Edge of Tomorrow. She can handle this! However, as John Krasinski goes on to explain, Blunt’s character Evelyn is driving two young actors in the car, who are playing the Abbott’s children. So he had to convince their families to go along with this risky endeavor. As he says:
Emily, God love her, she still got in the car, but there are little boys in the car. Marcus is in the car. There's no switch. There's no nothing. And to go to those parents and say, ‘I promise you the stunt, Paramount safety (and) the stunt guys, they have all okayed this. This is all possible.’ We had that bus within a hair's breadth of being able to stop. It had all these special breaks so that we could stop real quick. So it's three weeks of rehearsal for one minute of shooting.
But the finished sequence is so memorable that it’s worth the effort put in to capture it on film. Especially when you hear this last bit shared by John Krasinski about filming the bus stunt for A Quiet Place Part II. He told ReelBlend:
I said to Emily, ‘Do you want to run it once?’ And she's awesome. She said, ‘No.’ She's like, ‘Just put me in it.’ And so that take that's in the movie is her first tale. So that's her really saying ‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘Oh my God. Oh my God.’ Because she had no idea. It's like going on the best rollercoaster ride of your life. That was the first take that we did.
Unbelievable. Make sure you listen to the entire John Krasinski interview on the latest episode of ReelBlend:
Did that scene catch your breath in A Quiet Place Part II? It’s definitely an eye-catcher amongst the chaos of Day One in the Abbotts’ town. Now we’ll wait to see how many people head out to theaters this holiday weekend to take in A Quiet Place Part II. It’s feeling like movies are back, so keep an eye on our 2021 Release Date Calendar so you’ll know when the movies you are anxious to see will finally screen.
