Cillian Murphy’s character represents “where the heart of the world lies right now” in A Quiet Place Part II

Cillian Murphy in A Quiet Place Part II
(Image credit: Paramount)

A Quiet Place Part II sees the surviving members of the Abbott family leaving the relative safety of their home to explore what remains of the outside world, following the invasion of sound-seeking extraterrestrials.

Treading carefully into the wider world means we’ll meet more characters than we saw in the first film, which focused almost entirely on the central family (and those aforementioned alien invaders). One such new face is Cillian Murphy’s Emmett, who’ll cross paths with Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) and her children Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and Marcus (Noah Jupe).

As plot spoilers are being kept tightly under wraps, it’s not even clear if Murphy’s Emmett is going to be a friend or foe in this post-apocalyptic landscape. “I was blown away by [A Quiet Place]!” Murphy tells our sister publication Total Film magazine of the “unbelievably original” first film in their latest cover story.  “I was like, ‘I’m going to write an email to John Krasinski, because that was an amazing piece of work.’ So I wrote the email. And then I was like, ‘Ah, that’s so cheesy,’ and I never sent it. A year later, I got a call saying, ‘Would you be interested in A Quiet Place 2?’”

Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe in A Quiet Place Part II

(Image credit: Paramount)

Determined to keep his character an enigma (“I hate spoilers, I don’t want to read anything about a movie before I see it”), Murphy says, “for me, Emmett represents where the heart of the world lies right now, which is: finally feeling like they’ve all given up. Here comes this girl [Regan] who allows you to believe in more, and allows you to believe in yourself. That idea, I’ve always been really enthralled by.”

Murphy, Blunt, writer/director John Krasinski and more speak in detail about the movie with Total Film magazine for the latest issue’s cover feature. The new issue hits shelves on January 17. A Quiet Place Part II opens on March 20.

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Total Film's A Quiet Place Part II subscribers' cover.

(Image credit: Paramount/Total Film)

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Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.