A Quiet Place: Day One

This review may contain spoilers!

A Quiet Place: Day One is a spinoff prequel to and the latest entry in the A Quiet Place series. Within this film we follow Samira, a poet with a terminal illness, who is caught in central New York when the alien creatures arrive at Earth. As the world falls to ruin around her, Samira must navigate a ravaged and dangerous New York in an effort to find her last meal before death takes her.

 

This film takes what is really just an interesting point in time and location and runs away with a plot that matches up to the original A Quiet Place. This is a feature that really understands the horror component of this series, the way sound invades scenes and condemns certain characters to a final fate. I loved that most of this film sat in the silence, showing how quickly people learned about the creatures and how they hunted. More than that, it is interesting to see how sound works against the human characters of this film. One of the strongest scenes in the film is when we watch a crowd of evacuees trying to stay quiet but making too much noise just by existing in proximity to one another. This film has a neat and methodical way of quietly expanding on the mythology of the series, and I enjoyed that simple nature of adding to the world building.

 

This film functions so strongly because it serves as a real character piece. Samira is angry at the world even before it has all gone to hell. She is in constant pain, and in hospice making the motions before she passes away. When the world falls apart, we get very real horror and fear at all that has transpired, yet her determination that emerges is a nice subversion of expectations. Samira doesn't want to evacuate like all the other characters we see; instead, she is determined to make her way across the city to Harlem and get a last slice of pizza before she dies. This journey is a trial to be fought for, in which she makes new connections, fights against the odds and reconnects with her past and her joy. It is watching this moment of joy in what should be total abject misery that makes this film all the sweeter. We remember the nobility of sacrifice in Lee's death from the first film, but the ability to rediscover joy in a world lost is a really beautiful theme to work towards. I loved Samira's journey from start to finish, it felt like one of the better character arcs in this movie series.

Day One manages to show off the larger scale of New York while also narrowing down and holding to the intimate focus of Samira's story. The visual style is isolating and suffocating, but it also paints giant, boggling vistas of carnage and destruction. The way unique horror set pieces like the flooded subway tunnel are set up are so gripping in how they are shot. The special effects design of the creatures is the best it has ever really been, perhaps the most detailed and varied these creatures have looked onscreen. The score is really intense at times, making the danger feel very present across the film. But I also loved the more emotional tracks; portions of grief and rushes of cheer in some of the most memorable moments of the film. The use of "I'm Feelin' Good" is perhaps the capstone on this well-crafted feature.

 

Joseph Quinn, who played Eric, is quite a compassionate figure within all of this; his shell shocked terror is so genuine when first we meet him and the bond with Nyong'o that evolves from that is one of the best aspects of the film. Alex Wolff, who played Reuben, had this really fostering and kind nature; his determination to do right by Nyong'o made him one of the sweetest characters in the film. Djimon Hounsou, who played Henri, was a welcome return back to this series; Hounsou's big scene where he had to make peace with killing another human being in order to keep all the other survivors alive was one of the most arresting moments in the narrative.

However, the best performance came from Lupita Nyong'o, who played Samira. It is rare for Nyong'o to find a role that she doesn't completely dominate, this film is no different. Samira is resentful of the hand she has been dealt in life, coiling her rage tight around herself and letting it out in a few very powerful scenes. I loved the very realistic way Nyong'o portrayed living with constant pain, the reliance on medicine and the body language for the moments where her pain was at its most severe. This role really knew how to bite back at others, she's very quick-witted and is framed in a way that her poetic background makes a lot of sense. Nyong'o's emotional portrayal of a woman wanting to reconnect with the memory of her childhood and her father was a special one, an emotional point that elevated the entire feature. I loved how naturally expressions of terror came to her, it resulted in some seriously tense scenes. Nyong'o and Quinn built up a beautiful dynamic with one another that resulted in an extremely satisfying conclusion to the final act. I have missed Lupita Nyong'o leading blockbusters, and this performance showcases exactly why.

A Quiet Place: Day One is an incredible new entry in the series, but my big pondering coming out of this was: is there enough new ground being trod here? Ultimately, while a few new details were added to this world, and we got the perspective of a city falling, a lot of the same discoveries are repeated in this narrative. A Quiet Place has to find a next step forward that feels appropriate at some point soon, falling back on those safe in-universe details aren't going to last forever. I also felt this movie wasn't the most focused at times, the story sidetracked itself a lot and didn't seem to intent on following a steady narrative direction.

This film just goes to show just how far the Quiet Place series can go, so long as it remains creative and fresh. I would give A Quiet Place: Day One an 8.5/10.