‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ Review – Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn Light Up Emotional and Intimate Entry
All Samira wanted was pizza. After losing a battle with cancer for a long time, and sitting around waiting for her doctor’s report on her time left to be right, very few things can actually keep her spirit up. At the beginning of A Quiet Place: Day One, she’s convinced by the nurse in charge of the small group of patients she belongs to, to go over to New York City to watch a show — only because she was promised they’d get pizza later. Her disillusionment when the nurse told her that it would have to wait after getting news of something weird going on was enough to carry her through a world-ending and world-silencing event just so she could get to her favorite place up in Harlem.
If anything, the new A Quiet Place installment proves that franchises do not need to get bigger or pump up the spectacle. If anything, Day One tries its best to live up to its predecessors in terms of heart and an invitation to push through no matter how hard it gets out there, because there is always one more reason to fight. Michael Sarnoski (Pig) steps in to write and direct the sequel, from a story he conceived with franchise overlord John Krasinski, and it is just as intimate yet also as incredibly tense, as its two predecessors. Aside from the title, and an already-proven concept, there is nothing in this movie that suggests it’s been mandated by a studio to continue milking a new franchise.
And it goes even beyond that. These days, there are very few titles that are absolutely required to be seen in a movie theater. One might suggest the Avatar movies, or perhaps even Dune: Part Two — but for everything those movies offer in terms of spectacle and visuals, A Quiet Place: Day One gives a masterclass on how to set an atmosphere. You can actually hear a pin drop in the theater while watching the film, something that becomes unthinkable when picturing home viewing. Your neighbor turning on the vacuum cleaner would be enough to kill the entire effect.
The story of the 90-minute A Quiet Place: Day One is pretty straight-forward. It sees Lupita Nyong’o‘s Samira cross the city in deadly silence in one final crusade to get a slice of pizza and finally come to terms with the fact that the world has ended — not just for everyone else, but especially for her. However, the power of A Quiet Place: Day One doesn’t reside in the scope of its story as much as it does on the depth of its themes. Samira is in physical need of her medicines, but is in psychological need of reminiscing her childhood memories one last time before bowing out. The backdrop of a world-ending alien invasion serves her to realize that there are still some people worth saving.
Most important to her is her cat, Frodo, who easily steals the movie but doesn’t add a lot of meaning to the story. He’s there to show emotional support to Samira, but mostly, to add a lot of tension to the scenes. Sarnoski is well aware of the world of A Quiet Place and uses it to his advantage, but Day One‘s big setpiece ideas still can’t rival the first movie’s labor scene. But still, Day One still managed to maintain that balance of emotional investment and tension — it’s just two steps below its predecessors. We’re on board with the characters mostly because of the adventure we embark on with them, especially with Samira, but the character work feels like a shadow of what the franchise accomplished in past entries.
This is especially true for Law School student and unlikely travel companion Eric (Joseph Quinn), whom Frodo stumbles into during one of the big-scale attacks by the noise-driven monsters. Eric is captivated by the feline and follows him back to his owner. As we learn later, though, it’s more than captivation that made him go meet Samira; it’s mostly the need to find a companion, someone to share his journey with. By that point, the entire city is silently moving toward the harbors, where the rescuing of civilians is taking place — unfortunately for Samira, that is happening in the opposite direction as Patsy’s, up at Harlem.
It might be a refreshing move for a prequel such as this to not try to expand upon the mythology of the aliens, and instead focus on the humanity one can find at the end of the world. There are some interesting ideas, like the military using helicopters to communicate with civilians, given that the monsters cannot take them down from there, no matter how much noise they make — and instead are going crazy on the rooftops of the buildings nearby. But the film never feels the need to pander to the franchise’s audience by forcing the creation of a dedicated online encyclopedia that tries to keep up with the ever-expanding lore. Instead, it knows it’s all about the characters and that it has 90 minutes to sell you on them.
Speaking of selling us on the characters, every word in the script says about Samira doesn’t even come close to all we learn about her by looking for more than ten seconds. The Oscar winner proves here that she’s capable of putting out consistently outstanding work whenever there’s a minimum on the page she can latch on to. But Joseph Quinn, a name who first rose to fame with Stranger Things season 4 and who’s been on a lot of headlines surrounding high-profile projects, establishes himself as a force to be reckoned with here. His character is very much one-note dialogue-wise, but all the depth and vulnerability is pushed through thanks to his very strong acting (perhaps not including the time he over-acted the reading of a poem by Samira for the first time).
A Quiet Place: Day One may be a bit more silent than the trailers have made it out to be, but that’s also for the best. The story is both self-contained and also narrow-focused, but writer-director Michael Sarnoski is able to diminish the importance of having small-scope ambiiton because of the focus he puts on the characters and creating high-tension sequences around them. The actors rise to the occasion and elevate the material to new heights. However, by the end it still feels less satisfying than its two predecessors/successors.
A Quiet Place: Day One is currently playing in theaters worldwide.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
