WARNING: Spoilers For A Quiet Place Part II
The opening of A Quiet Place Part II set a template that the series needs to continue following. After a delay of over a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, A Quiet Place Part II hit it big upon release with the biggest opening weekend of the pandemic, along with receiving as much praise as its predecessor. The film's commercial performance and cliffhanger ending make A Quiet Place Part III all but a guarantee, and the second film has already done much of the heavy lifting for setting up how its successor should begin.
A Quiet Place Part II opens with the Abbot family at Marcus' baseball game, with a UFO seen falling from the sky, followed by the creatures from the first film rampaging through the town and pursuing its human population. In opening this way, the sequel fills in some of the story gaps of its predecessor. Namely, how the apocalyptic world of A Quiet Place came to be.
A Quiet Place showed how the Abbot family survived following the creatures' arrival, doing their best to make as little noise as possible to avoid being detected by the monstrous predators roaming the world. The sequel gave audiences all they need to know about how it all happened in its opening sequence and did so without diverting momentum away from the main story. Furthermore, the sequel ends in such a way that A Quiet Place Part III arguably has a bit of a mandate to open similarly.
The movie's ending sees Cillian Murphy's Emmett and Millicent Simmonds' Regan arriving on an island with a fairly sizeable human population, which has managed to survive without keeping noise to a minimum because the creatures can't swim. Of course, it all comes crashing down when one of them arrives on the island on an adrift boat, with the film ending rather abruptly after Regan kills it, but this also sets up how A Quiet Place Part III can get rolling in the same fashion as its predecessor. It's all about the island survivors.
As Djimon Hounsou's island inhabitant explains, the National Guard made efforts to ferry people to the islands after realizing the creatures can't swim, but the chaos that erupted from people trying to get aboard led to only two boats departing. Part III opening on this, and the survivors' arrival on the island, could serve the same purpose as the second film's opening, filling audiences in on events they didn't see previously. Opening this way would also compartmentalize the explanation of the island stronghold, giving audiences everything they need to know without taking over the whole movie.
A Quiet Place has turned into quite the horror franchise just two movies in, and its strategy of giving viewers the rundown on what's happening has been to its benefit. A Quiet Place Part III has a pretty clear set path to follow in the way its predecessor ends. However, the way that A Quiet Place Part II opens sets a formula further sequels could learn from.