A Quiet Place - Day One

Frodo, Bag In!

A Quiet Place - Day One
Directed by Michael Sarnoski
USA 2024
Paramount
UK cinema cut.

Warning: This one has all the those quiet spoilers.

Yeah, okay. This is surprisingly good.

I say surprisingly because A Quiet Place - Day One doesn’t include any of the main characters from the first two films and neither does John Krasinski, who played the father/husband in the original, write and direct here (although he does share a production credit). There is one character common with the second movie but... yeah, I’ll get to the problem that causes in a minute.

So this one is a prequel, starting in the same hours as the opening flashback on the second movie (reviewed by me here). And running over the course of a couple of days (so, trade description act people... it's not just Day One!). 

Lupita Nyong'o plays Samira, a young poet who is dying from some kind of disease, who has to wear pain patches to keep herself comfortable. She has a cat named Frodo, which she jokingly refers to as a ‘service cat’ (and who spends the entire film either running around by itself, on Samira’s lead or sometimes, in her ‘I Love NY’ bag). When the hospice Samira is staying at pays a visit to a New York theatre, as the show is finishing, the sound sensitive, blind aliens set up in the first film land and destroy New York City.

A new survivor acquaintance of Lupita, Eric, played by Joseph Quinn wants to get off to the docks somehow (all the bridges have been bombed to contain the creatures, who you’ll remember from the second installment, can’t swim) where evacuations are taking place. Samira just wants to get pizza and so Eric accompanies her. Also in the movie is the same character who was played by Djimon Hounsou towards the end of the second movie.

Now there are mostly positive things to be said about this movie and, as I’d heard, it’s a pretty intense piece which doesn’t let the original (reviewed here) or the sequel down in any way. And, if anything, there’s even less plot and character development in this one than the other two parts. In fact, this one is truly a full-on example of the survival horror/sci-fi genre at its purest, in that it’s mostly just about following the characters as they try to stay alive. It’s also excruciatingly suspenseful and, even in the last half an hour or so, manages to get fairly moving as the film plays out.

There are, however, a couple of problems with it and I’ll get into those in just a second but, congratulations for a film which deliberately (one assumes) sets up a cliché but then manages to never play the obvious card that comes with it. And that’s the cat. In the first movie you had the fear that the newborn baby wouldn’t stay silent. In this one, the air of suspense is built around Frodo the cat. I was, and I’m sure this is the case for all audiences, expecting the cat to let out a ‘yowl’ at least once, to inadvertently notify the giant bug aliens where the humans are. And to the credit of the writers here... it never hits that expected point. I mean, sure, the cat often goes off by itself and gets people into trouble when they are pursuing him but, they never once play the seemingly inevitable miaow moment with the feline companion. Which is refreshing.

That leaves two problems of very early telegraphing which, alas, can’t be overlooked. One is the problem of having Djimon Hounsou in this... which is even given away in the trailer and therefore gives you some idea of how the film will end. Since his character can’t be killed because he’s alive in the second movie (for most of his screen time in that film), you kinda know this film is going to end up with him and whoever is with him surviving to be able to find the island retreat he has set up in the second one. And, yup, sure enough...

The other problem is the character of Samira. By her own  admission she’s not getting any better and is expecting to die at some point soon. So this would trigger most audiences into realising she’s going to deliberately sacrifice herself to save someone else by the end of the film. Because why have that character survive if she’s toast anyway? And, yeah, sure enough...

But, is has to be said, these two big spoilers that are implied to the audience very early on don’t really hurt the film any. And, as I indicated at the start of this review, A Quiet Place - Day One is a pretty good movie with some nicely put together set pieces that worked pretty well with this audience member (even though the audience on a Saturday at my local cinema for this one was limited to just four people... so I don’t know what happened there). So if fairly well put together survival horror with a science fiction bent is your thing, then this one is definitely up your street.