Movie Review: A Quiet Place: Day One

2018’s A Quiet Place burst onto the scene with an original premise and some truly suspenseful set pieces to become one of the biggest horror hits in years. While it can be hard to catch lightning in a bottle like that more than once though, no studio would ever let a hit like that exist without at least one sequel, and so we’ve already seen a Part II which did almost as well as the original despite being released shortly after the Covid pandemic shut theaters down, and we have now also got this prequel, set during the first days of the alien invasion that saw the end of the world as we know it.

Writer and director Michael Sarnoski takes over the reigns for this spinoff based on a story that he wrote with original director John Krasinski and does a commendable job at keeping things fresh and exciting. In it, we are introduced to Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), a poet of at least some renown who is residing in a hospice care facility and dying of cancer. Care worker Reuben (Alex Wolff) asks her to join him and some of the other residents on a trip into New York City to watch a show and though her pain initially causes her to decline, she is ultimately convinced to come along.

The show winds up having an unexpectedly moving affect on Samira and so she steps outside the theater to have a moment alone not noticing the signs that something big might be happening in the city. She runs into Reuben as he finishes up a panic-tinged phone call and he instructs her that the trip has to be cut short and that she and the other residents need to return to the bus. Before they are able to leave the city however, large objects begin falling from the sky onto Manhattan and one hits just near the group, knocking Samira down and blanketing the street in a dusty haze that is eerily reminiscent of the footage from 9/11.

When she awakens, the haze persists and in a stunned silence she tries to make her way to somewhere safer while around her she witnesses people being picked off by mysterious creatures and she is once again knocked unconscious. The next time she comes to, she is back inside the theater with a large group of survivors, all of whom are trying to remain quiet. She is reunited with Reuben and her emotional support cat Frodo as helicopters fly overhead blasting messages to citizens urging them to stay silent and hide until rescue can be made, each passover causing waves of the creatures to rush by outside in pursuit of the sound.

Sam knows she is already dying however, and wants to make her way to Harlem to visit a spot with an emotional connection to her past and so sets out alone to do so, encountering English law student Eric (Joseph Quinn) along the way, a shell-shocked survivor of the chaos who latches on to her and her cat for support. Unable to shake him, she reluctantly accepts his companionship and the pair wind up making their way north towards Harlem together, doing their best to avoid the creatures that have taken over the city.

Despite promising to show the full horror of that first day, much of the disaster is kept off-screen, with Sarnoski instead choosing to focus closely on Samira and her response to it. This might disappoint some, but it helps to make the film feel more grounded and personal. The cast all give wonderful, humanistic performances, with Nyong’o and Quinn in particular excelling at making us care very deeply for their fates. As is common for the genre, they sometimes make some terrible decisions seemingly just to ensure we get another scare or two, but those scares are so effective it’s mostly easy to overlook.

We already know what the monsters look like, so they are shown in full pretty early on and remain suitably frightening even if some of the rules surrounding them are still best not thought over too extensively. While only rated PG-13 and therefore light on gore, there are still some truly terrifying moments here, and audiences will likely spend a lot of the time on the edge of their seats. In between those moments though, is a surprisingly sweet story about two strangers who are each suffering in their own way and learn to lean on each other to get through an extraordinarily trying situation, and it’s that element that truly makes the movie memorable. ★★★★