A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
The trailers don’t prepare you for the strikingly emotional human story at the heart of A Quiet Place: Day One, a phenomenal film that subverts expectations in rich and affecting ways.
I have to admit I rolled my eyes a little at seeing this franchise was headed into prequel territory, a way to squeeze more story out of a clever idea that ran a satisfying course in 2018’s A Quiet Place and 2020’s A Quiet Place Part II. Here, as in those films, noise-sensitive aliens have invaded Earth, attacking anyone and anything that makes a sound above a whisper.
Yet the story this time around is less about survival and more about what gives life meaning. It’s a quiet, deeply personal story with aliens on the sidelines. It hits hard, and I loved it immensely.
To briefly recap, the earlier films told the story of the Abbotts, a family struggling to communicate after a devastating loss under circumstances ripe with subtext. In a refreshing twist for a postapocalyptic story, these films also cast a person’s disability as an advantage, with the family’s deaf daughter figuring out a way to defeat the creatures and take back their part of the world.
A Quiet Place: Day One leaves the Abbotts behind, although Djimon Hounsou (Gran Turismo), who linked up with the family’s story in A Quiet Place Part II, adds some connective tissue here in a supporting role. This time, the story—and the film’s power—belong to Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o (Us, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) and co-star Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things).
Conveying a wealth of emotion through her eyes, voice, and physicality, Nyong’o plays Samira, a woman dying of cancer who journeys from a hospice facility with other terminally ill patients to Manhattan. The staff has arranged for a show in a small theater, then pizza—two things that promise joy.
Caught outside when the invaders arrive, then holed up in the theater, Sam is naturally frightened. But as military helicopters urge people to evacuate at the South Street Seaport, she decides to go for pizza anyway. To a nurse on the field trip, this seems foolhardy, but Sam knows she’s not long for this world. She just wants to feel whole and at home again.
Writer-director Michael Sarnoski (Pig) balances the blow-out moments with the subtler beats, thanks to the performances and a strong technical crew. (He shares story credit with the series’ previous director John Krasinski.) The sound design is again excellent, with the jingle of a bell or the thud of a book on the sidewalk triggering trepidation, then a mad race for shelter as the screeching creatures swarm.
Yet this film is beautifully shot, too. Cinematographer Pat Scola (Pig) captures the chaos of the early moments in closeups and medium shots, with people crying, then vanishing in clouds of smoky debris that for some might evoke imagery of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Then, as Sam makes her way north to Harlem, the city takes on an elegiac beauty: fires dotting the way instead of streetlights, sunlight streaming through the broken roof of a church where people still pray and wait.
Nyong’o is magnificent, holding scenes of silence alone, but she and Quinn, another performer skilled at emoting through a glance, complement each other nicely. Quinn plays Eric, a law student from England, at first shellshocked from his own brush with death. Sam takes pity on him, then recognizes someone who also finds purpose in something he can control with the world gone awry.
Sam’s therapy cat, Frodo, takes at least one unnecessary detour for suspense, and has some preternatural luck, but that’s a small quibble in a film that hits hard. Maybe it struck me so intensely because I’m a cancer survivor, but this is a film that teases with action—and delivers taut moments and jump scares—but also takes sly creative risks, relishing in wordlessness, unexpected connection, and flickers of delight.
A Quiet Place: Day One is not wall-to-wall fight-the-aliens mayhem, but it thankfully recognizes it doesn’t have to be. It’s a personal, poignant adventure about cherishing what matters most.
