When John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place took the world by storm back in 2018, audiences were clamoring for the edge-of-your-seat, don’t-make-a-sound horror film to spawn a franchise, and spawn a franchise it did. After A Quiet Place Part IIhit theaters in 2021, the minds behind the franchise did what many great horror franchises do and decided it was time for a prequel. A Quiet Place: Day One is unique among horror-prequels though in that it’s a thoughtful expansion on the original ideas of the franchise and holds its own as an individual film.
With Krasinski stepping away from a lot of the action for Day One – only receiving a Producer and Story By credit – he left both the director’s chair and the screenwriter’s desk open for Michael Sarnoski (Pig) to step in and make the film his own. With some of the quiet horror of the first two movies dialed back, Sarnoski instead ramps up the anxiety and pairs it with plenty of character depth, aided by outstanding performances from Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave, Us) and Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things).
A Quiet Place: Day One isn’t about finding a way to stop the creatures with hyper-sensitive hearing, nor is it about saving the world from them. We’re shown that, early on in this invasion, what matters is staying alive and helping your fellow man through a tragedy. The film sees Sam (Nyong’o), a terminal cancer patient living in a hospice, using the end of the world as a way to come alive one last time. With the first hours of the invasion in full swing, Sam comes across Eric (Quinn), a law student from England separated from his home country and family, who is scared out of his mind with no idea what to do or way to go. The pair of them form an unlikely friendship in the midst of the apocalypse, and work together to guide each other through the city as quietly as they can.
Lupita Nyong’o steals the show from the get-go with a performance that swings between dedicated desperation and a soft level of humanity and care that lends itself well to the story Sarnoski is telling. Joseph Quinn too delivers a stunning and raw performance that slowly and deliberately evolves from feeling lost, scared, and helpless to finding a way to push through his fear to survive. The character work in this film is top notch and will have you rooting for these characters until the credits roll.
The brand new setting of New York City really helps set Day One apart from its predecessors too. Since we’ve already seen these creatures after they’ve invaded and they’re out in the rural countryside in groups of two or three, showing a swarm of them essentially infesting a big city like New York flips the premise on its head a bit. We’re treated to chaos and panic from the moment they arrive, and it instantly transforms one of the biggest cities in the world into a wasteland. Both empty and crowded city streets, flooded subway tunnels, tight alleyways, and complicated building interiors are all used to show us how terrifying these creatures are in a way we’ve never seen before. It’s loud and destructive in a way that the first two films couldn’t be due to their setting, which shakes things up in a way that a sequel/prequel in a horror franchise doesn’t often get to do. Day One manages to do all this while still feeling like A Quiet Place movie – without losing the franchise’s signature brand of silencing anxiety that has kept audiences from chewing their popcorn too loud or breathing too deeply during a moment of suspense since the first film.
The elephant in the room here is no elephant at all, it’s a cat. Sam’s cat, Frodo, is adorable, and you can feel the connection Sam already has to him almost immediately, and the bond it quickly makes with Eric is very endearing. For all the right steps this movie took, however, I have to confess that my thoughts were occupied by the cat pretty much every time he was on screen, both with anxiety that I was about to see a cat die onscreen (light spoilers here: I was not) and thoughts that no cat I have ever met acted like that. Even during the moments he was off-screen, I was wondering where he was and if he was alright. Frodo is also some sort of silent super-cat who can survive just about anything, including being dunked underwater for extended periods of time, and has no qualms about waltzing around near the super-hearing creatures that instill fear into just about every other living being in this movie. It wasn’t enough to take me out of the film entirely or ruin the overall experience, but it was glaring in a way that I couldn’t just ignore despite how good the rest of the movie is.
A Quiet Place: Day One truly elevates the Quiet Place franchise as a whole, in part because it handed the reins to some new blood with Michael Sarnoski, and in part because of a very talented cast and brand new setting. If this franchise can keep reinvigorating itself the way it did with Day One, it should have the legs to become one of the horror greats.
Score: 8/10
Facebook | X | Instagram | TikTok
#AQuietPlace
A Quiet Place: Day One
Directed by Michael Sarnoski
Written by Michael Sarnoski, John Krasinski, and Bryan Woods
Starring: Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Djimon Hounsou, Alex Wolff, Alfie Todd, Alexander John, Eliane Umuhire
Release Date: June 28, 2024
Rating: PG-13
Synopsis: A woman named Sam finds herself trapped in New York City during the early stages of an invasion by alien creatures with ultra-sensitive hearing
Make sure you follow and subscribe to The Indie Magazine Podcast wherever you’re listening!
Stream The Indie Magazine Podcast on Your Favorite Platform
