A Quiet Place: Day One Review

The Quiet Place series sees a change of personnel in front of and behind the cinema with the New York set prequel A Quiet Place: Day One.

Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) is a hospice patient who is tricked into going on a day trip to New York. She hopes to go to her favourite pizza place before she dies. However, when Sam is in the city, aliens land and attack anything that makes that makes a sound. As the military advices people to head to the South Sea Port, Sam attempts to head north to Harlem.

The previous two Quiet Place films were highly regarded. The first film was one of my favourite horror films of the 2010s which was quite a feat considering the quality of horror films released in that decade. The films had monsters because the slightest sound could lead to someone’s death and it led to a lot of tension. Added to that was the family drama and tension which made the first Quiet Place a complete package. The sequel was overly complicated because of its world-building and three simultaneous storylines.

A Quiet Place: Day One went for a back-to-basic approach. It was a simple story of a woman travelling across a disaster-ridden New York on a mission to eat a slice of her favourite pizza. She was going to die anyway so she may as well have a final moment of satisfaction. Her motivation was like Tallahassee in the horror-comedy Zombieland. A Quiet Place: Day One was about the journey rather than the destination. Sam had to learn to be more open whilst Eric (Joseph Quinn) had to learn to be braver. It was a wonderful physical and emotional journey for both of them. Despite all the danger and misery, A Quiet Place: Day One aimed to show humanity and kindness could still prevail. It wasn’t a Walking Dead situation where the people’s dark sides were exposed.

Pig director Michael Sarnoski has taken over the directing duties from John Krasinski. Sarnoski is seen as an up-and-coming talent and the Quiet Place spin-off was a big jump from his indie debut. A Quiet Place: A Day One still had effective moments of terror and tension, especially when a monster was nearby. Eric’s fear was felt when he goes to retrieve supplies from the ruins of the city. A moment in the subway felt like the third act of 28 Weeks Later where a group of characters were traversing in the dark of the London Underground. A wonderful sequence was when a large group of survivors were marching southwards and the more people that joined, the more noise they made, drawing in the monsters. It was a great bit of tension that led to a horrifying conclusion.

A Quiet Place: Day One was a bigger-scale film than its predecessors. It moved the action from rural/small-town America to the big city and showed the apocalypse as it was happening. This made A Quiet Place: Day One feel more like a disaster film and an alien invasion film like Cloverfield and Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of War of the Worlds. They were all citizens’ eyes on the disaster unfolding before them whilst the military fruitlessly tried to fight back against an alien force. When the military shoot down the bridges it brought back memories of Will Smith’s version of I Am Legend and the “Hammer Down Protocol” in Cloverfield.

A Quiet Place: Day One was a standalone film. The only returning characters were Henri (Djimon Housnou) and his son, and that was to connect the prequel with the original films. Henri’s role was to show he was a natural leader, he didn’t take part in Sam’s quest. A newcomer to the series could watch A Quiet Place: Day One without being lost.

In recent years there has been an influx of Hollywood films being shot in London. Love Again and Morbius poorly attempted to make London look like New York, whilst The Flash and The Beekeeper couldn’t hide the fact they were filmed in England. A Quiet Place: Day One was also shot in England but the director and crew did a great job making their sets look like devastated New York. The film was shot on the backlot at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden, so the crew worked to recreate New York city blocks instead of trying to make London look like The Big Apple.

On a final note, as a cat lover, I loved Frodo. He’s going to be seen as one of the great movie cats and the trainers did a great job with the performers. Like what Disney did Captain Marvel, Paramount used the feline performer as a marketing weapon.

A Quiet Place: Day One keeps to the high standard set by the first two films. I preferred it over A Quiet Place: Part II. A Quiet Place: Day One was able to tell a touching story, kept the same level of horror and tension of the original films and the shift in sub-genres was unique within the franchise.