A Quiet Place: Day One is unexpectedly human for a prequel monster feature
Courtesy Paramount Pictures
A new Quiet Place movie is now in theaters, and we all know what that means: a reminder that one idiot in a public theater can ruin your entire day. There’s something particular about the films in this series, where the nature of forced silence in the space causes folks to check their phones more, chew crunchy food louder, and yes, bring a toddler. Each entry in this series has made for a wildly memorable theater-going experience for me—in both having a tremendous time with the flick and never forgetting the people who made me question my belief in humanity based on their behavior. In my Thursday afternoon screening of Day One, a dispute over a cell phone caused two men to fight and one of them to threaten to open fire in the theater. A new bar set for disappointment in my fellow man! I don’t have interest in further pursuit of resolution over that lunatic’s threat, but it’s just worth noting that the series of post-apocalyptic movies about mankind coming together to overcome the odds consistently inspires absolutely atrocious behavior in real life, and you simply can’t craft jokes that dire.
Apparently, I’m not at all alone in this kind of experience around these films.
Went to see #AQuietPlaceDayOne in IMAX at City Walk tonight and this dude sitting in the row in front of me had his phone out waiting to take a photo of the title screen. Which of course played over complete silence. After he got his photo. I said ‘Now put your phone away’ — rest…
— Will Landman (@WillTheLandMan) June 30, 2024
Anyway. The movie. Let’s talk about that because it’s great and well worth the price of admission (assholes in theaters.)
A Quiet Place: Day One is the third film in the QP universe, where monsters that hunt by sound have decimated humanity. While John Krasinski’s initial film was a genre hit, and its direct sequel with Cillian Murphy was one of those welcomed surprises where a horror sequel outdoes its predecessor, this new flick from director Michael Sarnoski takes us back to the moments just before the alien invasion—and tracks survivors through the mass destruction that follows.
Courtesy Paramount Pictures
Reversing in the timeline and abandoning the family central to the franchise is a series of risks, as is asking, “Do audiences really care about answering every question in this fictional world?” It turns out they do, as the QP series is one of the most consistently successful box office victories for a horror franchise. (So, obviously, get ready for Day Two or whatever, this time next year.)
In trading the other entries’ small slivers of a terrifying life in exchange for big, city-destroying spectacle, you’d expect a lot of the nuance to dissolve from the tiny silent dramas. Instead, director/writer Michael Sarnoski (creator of the excellent flick Pig) manages a tremendous balancing act of one-part spectacle action film to two-parts tiny character moments.
Courtesy Paramount Pictures
Protagonist Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) is a cancer patient taking a trip from her hospice to Manhattan along with her nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff) and service cat Frodo. Sam only agrees to the trip on the condition that the group stop for pizza at her favorite place in Harlem. The sudden invasion of echolocating aliens means a delay in pizza. Honestly, Sam is only interested in self-preservation because it means eventual pizza. Sam shelters in place with the other attendees of a marionette show. When a new round of tragedy strikes, Sam moves on to traversing the city alone with her cat, stopping to (attempt) to help those rare souls she encounters. Around the film’s midpoint, a traumatized, terrified survivor Eric (Joseph Quinn) basically imprints on her, like a baby duck, following her around.
A few all-star creative choices made within this movie really elevate the material. Sam’s cancer and terminal prognosis create a dichotomy between a person who is aggressively accepted death, suddenly flung into a situation that requires one claw for life at all costs. The world in Day One figures out the “no sounds” trick almost immediately, cutting down on what would be (in lesser hands) a full act of trying to just establish the rules. The military’s attempts at containment and extraction are (mostly) surprisingly well thought out. The entire third act of the film is a meditation on personal loss, joy, memory, and what we all owe each other—delivered deliberately and still under a burning blanket of tension.
It would also be a failure on my part, not to mention that this is perhaps the finest on-screen cat acting I’ve ever seen. Frodo absolutely steals chunks of this movie while also moving forward the plot in meaningful ways, and is just in general a hero in their own right.
A Quiet Place: Day One, that you’ve probably mostly encountered as the most overplayed movie trailer of recent years, is def worth the watch. In a series that has consistently strong entries, the people at the heart of this and the way their tale unfolds is maybe the best slice of this cinematic universe yet.
