A Quiet Place: Day One (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) sees director Michael Sarnoski, of Pig (starring Nicolas Cage) fame – replacing franchise creator John Krasinski (who probably should have directed this instead of a sappy kids’ movie) YEAH). And yes, as the title suggests, it is a prequel to the hit sci-fi horror films of 2018 and 2021, the latter of which already showed us what happened on the first day of the invasion of Earth by genocidal aliens who can’t see but can hear very well and therefore force everyone to be, as Elmer Fudd would say, as calm as possible. But at least Day one shows us a DIFFERENT first day, one starring Lupita Nyong’o and an incredibly adorable cat. Now let’s hope this movie doesn’t make us say “wow.”
A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONESTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: The movie opens with a title that says something about how New York City is constantly humming at 90 decibels, like “a constant scream.” What an interesting fact! Does it fit with the themes of the movie? Not especially well! But it’s great! From here on, Nyong’o will try to ruin my attempts at making fun of this movie with the kind of completely moving performance we should expect from her by now, though the cat will lighten things up considerably by being cute, doing the squinty-eyed purring sound, and acting like the most incredibly extraordinary and enduring cat in the history of the world.
Nyong’o plays a terminally ill cancer patient named Samira, who lives in a hospice. Her closest confidant is Frodo, a small white furry boy with black spots played by two puppies named Schnitzel and Nico. dying around here, only dyingIf it didn’t seem like a lack of respect towards a character who is in fact (Frodo is his comfort animal. He carries it everywhere, in his arms or on a small leash. Very well. A cat on a leash? Be careful! you Have you ever tried that? I have. It was unpleasant for me, the cat, the leash, and anyone within hearing range of a constant 90 dB scream. Hollywood!
Anyway, we meet Samira during a group therapy session led by caretaker Reuben (Alex Wolff). She’s a poet, and when asked to share a poem, she agrees with a piece she calls “This Place Sucks.” It’s safe to say she’s not in a good mental state. Reuben convinces her to join the excursion to New York City, promising that they’ll stop at her favorite pizza place from childhood, Patsy’s, for a slice on the way back. The bus drives over the bridge and we get a beautiful, romantic shot of the bustling city, and the moment should be savored because it’s pretty close to being in All Over. The hospice residents set up shop in a small theater for a puppet show, and Samira, far from being amused by this, sneaks out, but not before we realize she’s sitting in the row in front of Henri (Djimon Hounsou), who we know is a character from A quiet place part II. Small world!
As Samira grabs a chocolate bar from the shop next door, with Frodo under her arm, strange things start to happen. Sirens and vague noises in the distance and such. Reuben says everyone needs to leave and there’s no time for Patsy’s pizza. Samira is angry, but the feeling quickly passes as shells start to tear through Earth’s atmosphere and crash into the city. All hell breaks loose. She is knocked unconscious by a burst of madness and wakes up with some people who are sitting quietly in a room. QUIET PLEASE! ALIENS AT WORK! Don’t worry: Frodo is fine. Someone grabbed him and he is quickly reunited with the person he possessed.
But this group of people won’t hold together for long, because more madness is coming, and lots of it. Samira ends up alone — with Frodo, of course — walking against a crowd heading to the docks for a rescue boat, but makes too much collective noise and ends up scattered and/or splattered by the spidery aliens. She meets a British guy named Eric (Joseph Quinn), who emerges from a flooded subway corridor, gasping for air and shaken. They comfort each other for a minute, talking safely and calmly under the roar of a storm. Why doesn’t he just head to the docks? Because he’s dying anyway, and he wants one last piece of Patsy’s.
What movies will it remind you of? He Peaceful placeThe s are a bit like the fragments of disturbing silence of 28 days later stretched into a concept – crossed with Alien/Extraterrestrials, Signs and Bird box.
Performance worth watching: Nyong’o – never, ever not good, even in generic Liam Neeson action movies – imbues her character with such deep, existential empathy that you often forget she’s the protagonist of the latest in a series of films riddled with plot holes.
Memorable dialogue: “SHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Sex and skin: None.
Our opinion: Let’s talk about the most important component of Day one: the cat. He has a canine tendency to follow his human around even when he’s not on a leash, somehow survives a harrowing underwater ordeal, doesn’t dig his claws in and leap out of Samira’s arms when all hell breaks loose and always shows up afterwards, and miraculously doesn’t hiss or arch or meow at the hideous space gorgons from hell when they show up to dismember people. (I had an absolutely unflappable cat, so calm and malleable in personality that I could cradle him like a baby and rub his belly for hours. I nicknamed him The Perfect Cat, but he was nothing compared to Frodo. My little critter never got used to a leash.) Frodo isn’t just a cute thing to coo at: Sarnoski uses him as comic relief, a source of tension, and a visual throughline. When we feel disoriented by the chaos, the director returns to the cat to reorient us; For a moment or two after a particularly destructive sequence, we cynically resign ourselves to never seeing it again, but there it is, appearing from the rubble, no worse for wear. It’s a ridiculously adorable symbol of hope and perseverance: Hang in there baby!
The cat also distracts us a bit from the fact that Earth seems to be in a hospice now. Without Frodo, this is a heavy and potentially oppressive topic. Our protagonist, who we love because she’s played by Lupita Nyong’o, well, even if she survives thisShe is not going to survive. thatThe actress effortlessly compels us to become invested in Samira’s search for a little closure, one last bit of joy before… You know It happens, and Eric’s character is our analogue in that we, too, might risk our own lives to help her. Along the way, Sarnoski, who jumps from critically acclaimed indie drama to summer blockbuster with a fair amount of artistic credibility intact, devises and executes the familiar, yet effectively harrowing, action and survival sequences we’ve come to expect from this series and many other apocalyptic thrillers we’ve seen before. Two scenes, one set in a flooded train corridor and the other in what is either an alien egg farm or a coffee shop (I can’t tell which!), evoke Extraterrestrials In all the right ways.
Some will complain that Day one it is not really Peaceful place It’s enough that it simply uses the concept of staying silent or dying as a backdrop for a human story that would fit into a variety of conceptual scenarios. Frankly, I commend Sarnoski (who wrote the script, with Krasinski receiving story credit) for not giving a damn about the concept. Concepts don’t make movies great; good stories and characters do. Now, perhaps he could have done a better job of incorporating the franchise’s modus operandi of “silence is golden” thematically into Samira’s story. Then again, in any extreme circumstance, tangential stories like this emerge to make one better appreciate the power of the human spirit, forced literary pathos be damned. We should savor the deep irony of a woman struggling to survive despite being terminally ill, so she can experience something she loves so much, one last time. It turns a potentially fatalistic story into one of hope. To all of you who hate this movie, I have one thing to say: Meow.
Our calling: PASS IT ON. A Quiet Place: Day One It exceeds the expectations of a B/B-minus franchise, focusing too much and resisting the temptation to go overboard and explain, explain, explain all the whys and hows of what’s happening. It’s the best of the three films, by far.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
