A Quiet Place: Day One

4 outta 5

A Quiet Place: Day One is a prequel to the two Quiet Place films that fits into the series even if it doesn’t do much different. As the original film established the rules, if you make a peep you get killed by aliens, the series really only can expand ways to do various “quiet then loud then alien smashing” set pieces. Also, this film has a lot of characters that are primarily motivated by eating pizza and saving cats, which is a pretty basic character motivation, but it does make them sympathetic.

One day in New York, hospice patient Samira (Lupita Nyong’o) is on an outing with her fellow patients, her nurse, Ruben (Alex Wolff), and her pet cat, Frodo, although she just wants to stop off for pizza. But the day gets even worse when nasty alien creatures attack any sound source they can hear. So, Samira hides out with Ruben and a few other survivors like Henri (Djimon Hounsou), but she still wants a slice of pizza. Now as everyone is trying to escape to the bay as the creatures can’t travel across water, but the killer aliens are everywhere. Along her journey, Samira runs into another survivor, the law student Eric (Joseph Quinn), and he helps her get meds, looks after her cat, and assists with her determined quest to find that slice of pizza.

There’s this gag on Seinfeld when the characters are talking about a pretentious art movie and Jerry says the character buying bread, “represents buying back a piece of his soul.” It gets a laugh because it sounds hokey. Here Samira’s quest to find pizza is treated as serious because she used to get pizza with her deceased father. The movie tries really really hard to get the audience to like Samira, she gets oodles of tragic backstory, having cancer, needing her meds, and being frustrated she can’t find the pizza that basically represents her long-lost father. The characters in these films are usually thinly sketched out, there’s hints at their backstory which makes them more likable as they are attacked by aliens. Nyong’o is such an empathetic performer that she almost doesn’t need any sort of extra hooks to make her sympathetic, she just is. And as dopey as it is that characters are risking their lives for a slice of pizza/parental memories, it works.

There is a cliché in screenwriting called Save the Cat and this movie is basically the embodiment of it. Characters get more likable if they risk themselves to save a cuddly animal, and the cat is often presented in mortal danger and at even one point Eric must crawl through a group of aliens just to save the dang cat. But it is a likable cat, it doesn’t make a lot of noise, so it knows how to survive in this world, it is incredibly cute. The cat is basically Samira’s only friend in the world, and she has various ways to transport it. There’s a daring escape later in the film and Eric is running along the whole time holding the cat, showing the true priorities.

And there are a lot of moments that show just how screwed over humanity is. As the previous Quiet Place movies were set primarily in rural settings, seeing the aliens attack mobs of folks on the crowded island of Manhattan makes the chaos hit harder. There’s a bit where an entire crowd of folks are heading to the water and even though they are not saying anything, having hundreds of people walk en-masse in a group causes noise, and as Samira looks on as there are squeaky wheels on luggage and wheelchairs. Naturally, this causes the aliens to attack and things get really messy rather quickly. Beforehand, there is foreshadowing that things are going wrong as on a calm day in NYC has cop cars and military vehicles speeding down the road. That was also used in the opening scene of A Quiet Place: Part II so it has lost a bit of impact but it can be seen as a thematic recurring bit in both movies.

Another return from Part II is Hounsou, who played an unnamed leader of an island dwelling group. He has a wife and kid, something that he did not have in the sequel. He gets in a disturbing scene where he must quiet down a random guy who is freaking out with tragic results. Wolff as Ruben the caregiver is quite sympathetic towards Samira, which makes when she cuts him off with “You’re not my friend, you’re my nurse” heartbreaking. As Eric, the other person Samira runs with, Quinn shows a guy who is having a breakdown with all this chaos, but he does some really nice things for her, especially near the end involving pizza. When he puts on a magic show for her in an abandoned bar it is heartwarming.

While A Quiet Place: Day One doesn’t exactly add much new to the story, it is still essentially the same wait for things to go nuts pacing, it still delivers a visceral impact. The sound design is fantastic as it jumps from the extremes and really grabs the audience’s attention. These are intense movies and have satisfying emotional payoffs, even if those are mostly centred around pizza and cats.