A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE - Mark Reviews Movies

A Quiet Place: Day One, Paramount Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 27, 2024

There's an admirable simplicity to the plotting of A Quiet Place: Day One, which is a theoretically unnecessary spin-off/prequel within what's now a franchise about killer space monsters that hunt by sound. Those who have kept up with the previous two movies know that A Quiet Place: Part II, after all, began with a prologue that basically covered the same ground as this film. The main difference, apart from having an entirely different cast of characters (save for a glorified cameo from one actor in the sequel), is that this story of the aliens' initial invasion is set against a much larger backdrop than the second movie's opening sequence.

Writer/director Michael Sarnoski, taking over from filmmaker John Krasinski (who has story and producing credits for this installment), gets right to the point of what made the original film work as an efficient and effective thriller. It features a pair of sympathetic characters, as well as the occasional ancillary ones, in a string of smartly staged and cleverly designed suspense sequences.

Without the baggage of having to explain the monsters or coming up with a justification to continue a standalone tale, though, Sarnoski has a certain level of freedom here. He allows these characters to stand on their own, with performances that ensure they stand tall, and puts them in a sprawling urban maze for a game akin to a deadly variation of hide-and-seek.

The main figure is Samira (Lupita Nyong'o), who's living what might be her final days in a hospice care center outside New York City. She's not finished with life yet, but after a terminal diagnosis and multiple timelines for her death have come and gone, Samira has become cynical and weary of waiting to die in this place.

Hours before the blind and naturally armored monsters crash on Earth, Samira, with her emotional support cat in tow, and other residents take a trip into the city with one of the facility's kindhearted nurses (played by Alex Wolff) to see a marionette show. She's mostly happy about the promise of potentially one final slice of local pizza, but before the residents can take that trip, military vehicles speed through the streets, emergency sirens blare, and people are advised to return to their homes. As the bus is about to leave, fiery objects rain down from the sky and crash to ground with violent shockwaves.

From the previous two entries, we already know what this event is, what the crashing objects signify, and that the entire city and its population is in great peril. Sarnoski wisely assumes our knowledge and apparently has all of that information revealed in between the moments when Samira loses and regains consciousness after the first stage of the invasion. Samira quickly learns everything we and everyone else has figured out: Stay quiet, or the creatures will find and kill you.

The rest of plot is admirably counterintuitive. The government and military isolate Manhattan Island. People sit and hide in silence, awaiting news of what's happening and word of any kind of rescue/evacuation plan. Once it's discovered that the monsters can't swim, survivors are ordered to make their way to ships awaiting on the river, but Samira has resigned herself to the inevitable.

Instead of following the crowds to the water, she's determined to make her way to Harlem for that pizza. Along the way, she finds a traveling companion in Eric (Joseph Quinn), a law student from England who was by himself in the city before the invasion and now finds himself terrified by the possibility of dying alone here.

What is this story really about, then? It's definitely not about the mythology of the creatures, which has been established and developed about as much as can be by this point. It's not about the full scope and scale of the alien invasion of New York, which happens in the background or only when absolutely necessary along Samira's trek. Such sequences are an essential part of this series, of course, so they are here. Sarnoski imagines some frightening ones, too, using silence and the build-up of sound incredibly well in those moments.

One wrong footfall, for example, could kick a can or crush some piece of rubble, summoning a monster with its muscular appendages and a jagged-tooth jaw beneath a hood of rough, hardened flesh. We've seen such suspenseful scenes in the series before, but there's one sequence here that ingeniously use the larger population of the city with subtly mounting tension.

In it, people begin to walk toward the ships in relative silence, only for more and more people to congregate, leading to the gradually increasing volume of footsteps, clothes brushing with movement, and bodies bumping into each other. Individually, such sounds don't register with the creatures. Collectively, they definitely do, and the resulting chaos, particularly a moment involving the underside of a car and a slowly deflating tire, is genuinely chilling.

All of this works, but it does so primarily because Saronski's screenplay doesn't focus its attention on the suspense, the attacks, and creating excuses for more of them. Instead, it becomes a quiet, character-focused piece about looking for comfort in the face of death and, in the bond that develops between Samira and Eric, finding it in little, unexpected acts of support, kindness, and a shared need for some connection.

The lead performances get at that, while Nyong'o generates abundant sympathy as a person wanting to die on her own terms and Quinn allows his hero to be wholly vulnerable in moments of fear. It's unexpected touches such as those, as well as the grounded emotional stakes of this material, that make A Quiet Place: Day One rise above its franchise-continuing origins.

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