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A Quiet Place: Day One Review
Image Credit: Paramount Pictures
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Directed By: Michael Sarnoski
Written By: Michael Sarnoski
Runtime: 99 minutes
MPA Rating: Rated PG-13 for terror and violent content/bloody images.
Lupita Nyong’o – Samira
Joseph Quinn – Eric
Djimon Hounsou – Henri
Alex Wolff – Reuben
Eliane Umuhire – Zena
John Krasinski’s horror franchise, A Quiet Place, continues with its first spinoff entry, A Quiet Place: Day One, returning to the first day the Death Angels invaded the planet. Although the first two films were set in a rural small town, Day One takes place in the huge metropolitan area of New York City, revealing how the events unfolded from the perspective of a terminally ill bystander, Samira (Nyong’o).
As the film begins, Samira, a poet and writer, is completely miserable, living under hospice care. She’s in a losing fight with cancer, with just days left to live. Writer and director Michael Sarnoski’s choice to use a terminally ill cancer patient, as the protagonist at the end of her rope, is bold, yet ultimately rewarding. Samira continues to fight for her survival, even though she will soon succumb to her illness. With the entire world crumbling around her, she still has one remaining task to complete, seeking to return to her old neighborhood in Harlem and grab a slice of pizza.
During the journey back to her hometown, Samira unwittingly comes into contact with another survivor, Eric (Quinn), whom Samira reluctantly takes in like a frightened stray. Eric joins Samira, seeking to help her complete her final request. Unfortunately, the city is infested with Death Angels, and the military attempts to quarantine Manhattan by blowing up the bridges. The slightest sounds alert the Death Angels, and this is before anyone manages to figure out the creatures’ weakness with the specific radio sound frequency. New York City has become a literal death trap with no safe means of escape.
Despite the New York City setting, Sarnoski opts to focus on the personal human story, as Samira and Eric bond in their short time together. It’s an emotionally compelling storyline seeing these two humans connect in such a dire situation. The tension comes from the ever-pressing threat of the Death Angels, rather than each other. In a post-apocalyptic setting, it’s nice to see the compassionate side of humanity emerge in their relationship.
It’s interesting how frighteningly little is known about the Death Angels. Day One barely expands their mythology. One scene in particular involving the Death Angels is more obfuscating than revealing. It’s difficult to understand what the filmmakers were trying to depict in the sequence. These creatures appear to have no higher intelligence, and they are incredibly deadly, feral, and predatorial. They hunt in packs, and they appear to kill humans instantly. However, the film maintains their mysterious origins in which they appear to crash land on Earth through meteorites. Are the Death Angels some specifically designed drones meant to cleanse the Earth and humanity for a more intelligent race? Did the Death Angels crash land on Earth by pure random chance? How were they even able to travel through space? The Death Angels, in no way, resemble a space-faring race that’s intelligent enough to purposefully craft interstellar travel. All of their behavior looks to be purely primal and instinctual. Day One has no interest in answering such questions.
There are two conflicting minds for the Death Angels. On one hand, they are so mysterious and terrifying, which naturally provokes curiosity into their origins. Yet, that mystery is partly what makes them so frightening. Revealing their origins risks killing their mystique, similar to the Xenomorphs of the Alien franchise in its latest entries. That aside, while the mystery remains intact, the movie reveals frighteningly little about the creatures. What the film does reveal about them lacks clarity.
Sarnoski performs well in presenting the Death Angels as a cripplingly terrifying threat, creating some incredibly suspenseful, creepy sequences. One wrong step means a certified death sentence. The threat of the Death Angels organically suspends characters from conversing and communicating with each other. This results in a film experience that relies on imagery and visual storytelling. The visual storytelling, combined with the world’s loudest city becoming deathly quiet, creates a harrowing narrative experience. The main characters desperately seek some measure of solace when they are panic-stricken and nearly frightened to death.
Sarnoski does take some conveniently cheap and easy shortcuts. It’s hard to believe, so quickly after the invasion, that panic-stricken New Yorkers would easily pick up on needing to be quiet to avoid alerting the Death Angels. There is a hint of the military choppers and emergency networks broadcasting the call for silence throughout the city, but nerve-wracked, terrified survivors managing to grasp that idea so early on plays inorganically.
A Quiet Place: Day One plays like someone explaining the game’s rules quickly and easily to the main characters, lacking a better method of cluing them into the need for silence. That said, one of the more taught, tension-filled scenes shows the noise level rising when more survivors gather together before something terrible happens. The other main flaw is that Sarnoski builds tension-fraught scenes but cuts away from some of them too quickly, not providing key beats and events that would offer some clarity or show how characters escape their predicaments.
The narrative features an adorable, affectionate cat companion, Frodo the Cat, which cat and animal lovers will certainly appreciate. Frodo is a very patient and quiet cat, though he arguably gets the characters into some of their most dangerous moments. That said, Frodo acts as an unwitting guide throughout the film, leading the characters to their salvation in each other.
A Quiet Place: Day One succeeds as a solid companion piece for the franchise, focusing on a compelling human story in a dire situation.
