A Quiet Place: Day One

I don’t know how this series hasn’t fallen into the sequelitis trap of diminishing returns yet, but I’ll take as many follow-ups to this one as they can manage.

Set against the backdrop of New York City on the day the world went silent, A Quiet Place: Day One follows terminally ill patient Samira (Lupita Nyong’o) after she works up the courage to take a day trip into the city with her fellow hospice patients and take in the sights and sounds exclusive to the Big Apple. Needing to regain some semblance of control over her life despite her protests against the idea, events predictably spiral out of control, and before Sam knows it, alien creatures with the uncanny ability to hunt via sound are slicing people in half and destroying everything around her, putting her in a situation she’s even less equipped to deal with than most. Soon meeting a traumatized and anxiety-riddled man named Eric (Joseph Quinn), Sam and her fellow survivor must do just that — survive — as they attempt to cross a now ruined city to safety, unaware of how to defeat or escape the extraterrestrial threat that has brought humanity to its knees.

A unique prequel in the sense that we no longer need to follow a consistent set of characters i.e. the Abbott family from the original films, and instead can dive into a universe where its concept alone can carry our interests, A Quiet Place: Day One is full of expectedly tense moments that follow in the same horror-esque vein as what came before but also manages to up the stakes with some inventive action scenes that benefit from a larger scope (and bigger budget), as well as a handful of quiet (no pun intended) moments between Sam, Eric, and even Sam’s cat, Frodo, that help to sell this film and justify it needing to be produced in the first place. Throw in a seemingly inconsequential but entirely character-driven subplot involving Sam wanting to find the last pizza slice in NYC on top of some heart-wrenching material involving Eric and his unresolved personal fears, and I couldn’t have been happier with nearly all of what I saw here.

If I had to nitpick, it would come down to the pacing of it all. Though I appreciated the smaller moments — especially a brilliantly poignant scene set during a rainstorm — I can’t say that all were needed, as more than a few times I found myself wanting the plot to move along even though it insisted on staying in the moment when it didn’t need to. Couple this with some suspension of disbelief for how damn quickly everyone found out that they had to keep quiet to survive, and the worst parts of this movie aren’t enough to tarnish the overall experience, a huge accomplishment considering the potential for this one becoming an uninspired and unoriginal cash grab was incredibly high from the start.

I’ll admit there are a few slow spots to get through and maybe one or two instances that stretch our suspension of disbelief a little too thin, but for being as different as this movie is from its predecessors, I was excited to see what the future holds for this series by the time I left the theater — as long as the filmmakers keep putting character work first and a compelling story in a close second, that is. A Quiet Place: Day One successfully makes the transition to a brand new location with brand new characters and brand new filmmakers behind the lens, yet somehow still finds a way to be a tense, character-driven story that fans of this now budding franchise will enjoy, making this one well worth the watch for anyone who wants some substance with their scares.