“A Quiet Place: Day One” Review
Joseph Quinn (Left) and Lupita Nyong’o struggle for survival in “A Quiet Place: Day One” a prequel/spin-off film in the popular horror film series.
When I was watching “A Quiet Place: Day One” in a theater, I liked to play a little game with myself. Since the world of the “Quiet Place” films means that you can’t make a noise or else aliens will brutally kill you, I like to see how long my audience would last. Despite the best efforts of many of my audience members to quietly whisper, I would be the last one standing. I’m not sure if I should be proud or sad that, despite multiple promos telling the audience to be quiet, a group of grown adults can’t follow basic directions of decency. Fortunately, my experience watching the third film in this series was an enjoyable one with an excellent change of location and feel to differentiate this spin-off from the original and its sequel.
Unlike the other two “Quiet Place” films, which focused on a family’s survival against blind aliens with super hearing over a year after they landed, “Day One” takes on a completely different atmosphere. Instead of being set in the countryside or a small town, this film is set in New York City on the very first day the aliens crashed to Earth and began killing anyone who made a noise. In this chaos, a woman named Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) and her cat Frodo struggle to survive as she tries to make her way up to Harlem. Along the way, she encounters a young law student named Eric (Joseph Quinn) and together they try to find a way out of the city before it’s too late.
While “Day One” had an easier time gripping its audience than the first film, since “A Quiet Place” is now a beloved classic, it had its struggles. The film is working with a completely new cast and setting. However, this has given writer/director Michael Sarnoski (whose first film “Pig” was a phenomenal character study with the great Nicolas Cage) the means to work the basic idea of the series to his own style. Surviving these things in the countryside may be difficult but can you imagine living in a place as noisy as New York when these aliens landed? I’m amazed that anyone survives this film with that environment.
Lupita Nyong’o’s performance is excellent as she plays a naturally reserved person that makes her survival more apparent. With life as she knows it gone, she goes on a journey in search of a simple goal. While I’m not going to give what she’s seeking away, it really made me smile as a New Yorker. She’s one of our best actors working today and this performance shows that her talents cannot be limited by genre whether it’s her Oscar-winning [performance in “12 Years a Slave” or in blockbusters like this film or “Black Panther.”
Joseph Quinn also serves the film well and I’m so happy to see how his career has taken off following his performance in the fourth season of “Stranger Things”. The relationship he forges with Nyong’o is first forged by a mutual interest in self-preservation but, as the film progresses, you feel for the friendship that emerges. The pair have excellent chemistry and the ways they help each other feel like a glimpse of hope for humanity in light of an apocalyptic nightmare.
Like the previous two films, Sarnoski replicates John Krasinski’s excellent sense of suspense with an excellent use of jump scares, sound design and a feeling of dread knowing that any slight noise could cost you your life. Since the film also serves as a prequel, it’s especially intriguing to see how the characters figure out how to survive. In the case of “A Quiet Place” and its sequel, the characters were already aware of how to get around the aliens’ sense of hearing. So, it’s neat to see how people figure out that if you’re next to a consistent loud noise, like water falling, then you can talk without dying as long as your voice doesn’t carry over. This time around, the sound design is able to work in sounds of the city and it’s so jarring to hear all of the chaos of New York evaporate amongst the blind death of alien invasion.
Because the film is a spin-off and a prequel, it isn’t afforded the same kind of gravity that the main series has to offer. However, I think that’s to be expected and I think that “Day One” does an excellent job working with its new elements to create a summer blockbuster that is sure to attract fans of the other two films. I don’t know if it will make a die-hard film about a newcomer but it will probably get them to check out the other two films as well as build anticipation for John Krasinski’s third and final “Quiet Place” film.
