Something happened this week that hasn’t happened to me for a while. I went to a cinema; to watch a film. That that could, in and of itself, be considered an event shows that things have been, of late, somewhat extraordinary, though certainly, not as strange as the setting of the film in question, A Quiet Place: Part 2, more of which later.
Cinemas were able to reopen in the UK a few weeks ago (17 May 2021), and while I was certainly keen to see something back on the big screen, I hadn’t gone sooner for two reasons. First, I wanted to wait until there was something I wanted to see, and second, I delayed until I had two Covid jabs under my belt, or rather, in my right shoulder, before going.
Suitably armed, (so to speak) I went to see A Quiet Place: Part 2–and not just anywhere: at the very impressive Odeon Luxe Leicester Square–the chain’s flagship London location cinema, and the only Dolby Cinema in London (Others in the U.K. can be found in Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester and there are numerous in the U.S. I’ve written about both before, but suffice to say that the Odeon Leicester Square is a great place to watch a film–and while it’s not a small, intimate experience, and the screen is not the hugest, the cinema is well appointed and the seats are huge and sumptuous–complete with tables for your nosh, and fully reclining; not that I chose to make use of this function for noise-related reasons I’ll get onto shortly.
On the technical side, the Dolby projector provides bright images, vivid colors and deep blacks, for the best contrast ratio; and for content graded for Dolby Vision, it delivers what, in pure image quality terms, I believe is the best that’s available in commercial cinema right now. What’s even more pertinent for a film such as A Quiet Place Part 2 though, is the audio–and that makes a Dolby Cinema the perfect place to see it. If you’re planning on seeing the film, it’s likely you’ve seen the first one (I watched the first the night before I saw the second, which is the best way of doing it, as the story of Part 2 essentially carries on straight after the first one) so you’ll know that it’s about a world where making any loud sound will bring down horrific monsters that kill you in a near-instant, turning the world, or what’s left of it, into a quiet place (geddit?). The first part was described as virtually a silent film, and while that’s not quite true of the second, it makes equally outstanding use of audio.
Much of it is silent but the sudden arrival of loud sounds and the consequences are some of the most visceral experiences I’ve ever experienced. Famously, the first part was a film, that through the absence of sound and the nearly unbearable tension generated, was able to quieten cinema audiences who are often more interesting in their food than the film they have paid to watch. And I can attest that, once again, A Quiet Place 2 makes it very difficult to eat popcorn–you have to take full advantage of the moments the tension breaks and the score kicks in to get your munching in, otherwise the crunching sounds like it would be audible to everyone in the auditorium–and who wants to be that guy?
It’s the use of Dolby Atmos that was so effective. The ability of Atmos to place sounds all around you makes perfect sense where creatures can arrive from any angle. In one particularly satisfying moment I could hear the creatures way off to the side, and behind me: and it sounded as if they were about to burst through the door of the cinema. This was particularly effective thanks to the size of the room. While elite home cinema setups can often sound better than some commercial cinemas, there is no way of recreating the experience of sitting in a large physical space; and some films, such as this one lend themselves to that.
Having seen both films back-to-back, I think they represent truly great cinema, and a tour de force of cinematography, editing and most of all, sound design. Even if dramatic, survival horror isn’t normally on your shortlist, I would make the effort to go see it–and in a Dolby Atmos-enabled movie theater if you can do so.
