A Quiet Place: Day One

The third film in this franchise is a prequel instead of a sequel.  It does tread familiar territory, with blind monsters rampaging about, bonds formed in the midst of the apocalypse, and everyone desperately holding in any sound.  Yet director Michael Sarnoski, best known for the Nicholas Cage vehicle Pig, is creative enough that he imbues Day One with fresh ideas and surprising emotional resonance.  This is one of those films that certainly deserves to be seen in the theater with a large crowd, as well as an experience that is best going into as blind as possible.  Considering this, I will refrain from saying too much and give you the basic premise.

The title and ad campaign have made it clear, of course, that instead of watching a select few struggle to survive long after the beginning of the alien invasion, we are witnessing the outbreak.  We are informed about the sound volume of the busy New York, making it the perfect setting for the impending outbreak.  Yes, we were shown this in the prologue of the second film, but that was a small portion of that sequel. 

But Sarnoski does a wonderful job of taking a bit of time to flesh out our protagonist before everything goes to hell.  Lupita Nyong’o, who did such amazing work in films such as Us and Black Panther, plays Samira, a terminally ill cancer patient who lives in hospice.  She despises her situation and the people around her.  Alex Wolff, who starred in Pig, plays the care worker who convinces her to join the group on a bus trip into the city to watch a show.  Samira wants New York pizza more than anything else, and he tells her that they will get some on the way back.  She is less than pleased that it’s a marionette play, and when meteorites crash in the city, Samira desperately finds herself running for cover as so many others around her are killed almost instantly.

The director is perfectly capable here, wisely posing interesting questions through the plight of Nyong’o, who runs into Djimon Hounsou (returning from the sequel).  Is life worth living if you are already living on borrowed time?  How far would you go to protect yourself?  Characters find themselves in moral dilemmas, and in a world that deliberately feels like 9/11 with its destroyed landscape and death all around, the choices they make are not always easy.

But the film effectively finds its greatest strength when Samira and her precious cat, Frodo, cross paths with Eric (Joseph Quinn of Stranger Things fame), a frightened English law student.  He follows her, and eventually they form a bond.  She is still on a quest to taste that pizza, which is in Harlem.  Of course, the road there is perilous, with spiderlike creatures roaming all around.  The ways these two manage to communicate without speaking is one of the prequel’s greatest strengths.  Sarnoski is able to give us several beautiful scenes, leaving us with some unexpected emotional resonance by the time the credits roll.  The films in this franchise have always been creepy creature features with human stories at their core, and this one is no exception.

Being the third entry in this franchise, it follows the familiar beats of its predecessors.  Also, it requires quite a suspension of disbelief while watching this one, because it raises a few questions that we cannot exactly ignore.  Are we supposed to really believe that this noisy and very large city can suddenly shut up so quickly?  After two movies with these aliens, I felt like there was a missed opportunity here to expand on them.  Why are they here, and where did they come from?  I don’t need the story by co-writer and executive producer Krasinski to delve into Prometheus territory, but some more information would help. There are also a few cheap jump scares, which is disappointing considering that these films have better thrills and chills.

But by far the biggest problem with the script comes early in the film, where Nyong’o is knocked unconscious and we cut to black. When she comes to, she discovers a group of survivors who are hiding, but they have miraculously figured out that silence keeps the beasties at bay. After two movies, we know this, but how did these people learn this so quickly on Day One?

If you are burned out on dystopian or post-apocalyptic stories—whether they are films, shows, or even games—you might not want to bother.  Even so, as much as I would prefer another sequel instead of this film, it has a lot going for it, with one of the strongest relationships that we have seen in this franchise to date.  While nothing will top the freshness and emotion of the original, this is definitely worth a trip to the theater.

99 minutes