‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ Movie Review: Novelty Is Gone But Prequel Still Delivers Thrills And Heart
Photo from Paramount Pictures
From Jeremy Kibler
John Krasinski made something special with both 2018’s A Quiet Place and 2021’s A Quiet Place Part II: an original, masterfully crafted horror film and a worthy follow-up that dared to make its audience shut up for a few hours. The novelty might be worn already, especially in making a prequel set in New York City. But A Quiet Place: Day One manages to still be a pretty thrilling popcorn movie and an emotionally resonant walking-and-no-talking drama about death.
Part II already showed us Day One, at least with the Abbott family in their small town. This time, we meet Sam (Lupita Nyong’o), a New York poet who just wants pizza in Harlem before she dies of cancer. That’s her only request when her hospice nurse (Alex Wolff) encourages Sam to go into the city with the other patients to a puppet show. Their excursion gets cut short when the entire city comes under attack by hordes of sound-sensitive alien creatures. It’s just Sam and her service cat Frodo (wonderfully played by Nico and Schnitzel) trying not to make a sound and maybe stay alive.
Michael Sarnoski (Pig) takes over writing-directing duties for Krasinski, and while the passing of the baton isn’t seamless (it’s hard not to compare), this is a solidly crafted and involving pre/sidequel. There was the personal worry that these movies would become too expansive and become overblown, something akin to a Roland Emmerich disaster flick. That isn’t fully the case here, though, as the characters truly do matter, just like the Abbott family did.
Above all, Lupita Nyong’o makes for an exceptional anchor for the film as Sam. Efficiently drawn as a cynical, morbid woman who knows her time on Earth is now limited, Sam is easy to invest in as a character. The same could be said about Eric (an emotionally available Joseph Quinn), a displaced English law student whom Sam can’t really shake off. Eric really wants to live, while Sam might be content with just living out her days with pizza and her cat, and there’s something beautifully tragic about their platonic pairing. Also, Frodo the cat. There are a few times where we just have to go along with the absurdity of the adorable furball being tossed about and holding his breath in a tote bag. Needless to say, Frodo is a total sweetheart, proving dogs don’t have to be the only animals to be thrown in peril.
While the pacing falls into a constant stop-and-start rhythm, there are still plenty of hairy situations Sam and Eric (and Frodo, holding on for dear life) find themselves in, including being chased through the lobby of a glass office building and slinking through a sewer system. The smoke-filled trauma Sam experiences as soon as the aliens crash the city is effectively disorienting, but then thereafter, the action is sometimes unevenly shot and too darkly lit. Luckily during the downtime, there are just enough sweet, intimate moments between Sam and Eric, particularly one in an abandoned jazz club, that land and justify the film’s existence.
A Quiet Place: Day One never quite matches the bravura filmmaking of the first two films, nor does it attempt to build upon anything we already know. With those qualms out of the way, this does work best as a tense but ultimately moving mortality drama between strangers. Aside from some sniffles, it’s nice to hear an audience silent again.
Rating: 3/5
A Quiet Place: Day One hits theaters on Friday.
