Josh Reviews A Quiet Place: Day One

A Quiet Place: Day One is a prequel to the two A Quiet Place films, showing us what happened on the first day when the aliens who menaced John Krasinski & Emily Blunt’s family first arrived on planet Earth. The story focuses on Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), a young woman in hospice who finds herself trapped in New York City when the aliens arrive and start wreaking havoc.

As readers of this site know well, in general I hate prequels. But I like the idea of taking the Quiet Place story back to the beginning, and setting it in the urban jungle of New York City as opposed to the rural location of the first two films.  That’s a solid idea, and this film is well-executed.  Writer/director Michael Sarnoski has done strong work here, ably stepping into John Krasinski’s shoes.  (Mr. Krasinski directed the first film, and was one of three screenwriters; and he wrote and directed the second film.  Here he was a producer and he has a story credit.)  The Day One title is a fun play on how the original film was set on “Day 473” after the aliens’ attack.

It’s fun to see a more traditional aliens-attack version of this Quiet Place story.  The film has some familiar beats (reminding me distinctly of films like Cloverfield and Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds), but it’s undeniably a blast to get to watch the Quiet Place monsters rampaging through New York City.

And they hit a home run centering the story on Lupita Nyong’o’s Samira. Ms Nyong’o is wonderful, mesmerizing and soulful.  She’s always incredible on screen, and it’s a pleasure seeing her in the starring role here.  I was intrigued by her character right from beat one; I enjoyed following her through this story.

I love Djimon Hounsou, and I continually feel that I he is underused when he appears in films.  From this film’s opening, I’d assumed that this movie would follow Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam and Mr Houbsou’s character, Henri, through the story. That would have been fun — I think watching Sam and Henri paired up thought the film would have been a very interesting pairing — but it turns out he’s more in the film as a connection to A Quiet Place II.  That inter-film continuity is a nice idea, but I wanted more of him.

Instead, Ms Nyongo’s co-star winds up being Joseph Quinn as Eric. Mr. Quinn was instantly impressive and compelling as Eddie Munson in Stranger Things season four, and he was also terrific here, playing a very different guy.  I like the idea that the young white male character is sort of a scaredy-cat.  I loved how Mr. Quinn played his cowardice; not too over the top, but more the way a normal human being (as opposed to a movie theater) would respond in this situation.  I liked that it was the white guy who was the damsel who needed rescuing by Sam in the end.  That all played very well.

I enjoyed the way Sam and Eric’s connection gradually built over the course of the story.  The two actors had great chemistry with one another, and I appreciated that the film gave these characters the space — amidst the monster mayhem — to develop.  I appreciated that Day One had scenes of quiet and character development and wasn’t just wall-to-wall action.  I found the ending to be unexpectedly poignant.  I was rooting for a happier ending, but that’s just because I’d grown to like these characters; what we got felt like the right choice for the story.  (Also the right choice: that they kept Sam and Eric’s relationship platonic, rather than squeezing in some end-of-the-world smoochies.)

Frankly, my only main complaint about this film is that I’m shocked that they basically skipped over humans’ discovery that the aliens attach sound!  That was of course the main hook of these creatures, as originally introduced in the first A Quiet Place film.  I thought for sure one of the main reasons for doing a Day One prequel was to explore how people figured that out.  But here, basically as soon as Samira awakens in the theatre with the other refugees, they all already know that they have to be silent.  That feels like a huge missed opportunity to me!

(OK, I have one more complaint: not since Ridley Scott’s original 1979 Alien has a movie heroine eye-rollingly braved so much peril because of a cat.  Maybe I have to be a cat-person to better understand this??)

A Quiet Place: Day One isn’t revelatory in any way, but it’s a well-made, solidly entertaining movie.  I enjoyed it.  See it on a big screen if you can.

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