‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ REVIEW: It’s time to pipe this franchise down
‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ REVIEW: It’s time to pipe this franchise down
Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn in A Quiet Place: Day One | Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures International
One of the main reasons why going to the cinemas is still considered (and will forever remain) special is because of sound. There's something special about the way an explosion jolts your seat as the sonic boom reverberates and shakes the interior walls of the theater that you're in; or how the tap-tap-tapping of rainfall and the hissing of leaves being swayed by the wind soothe the mind like one of those late-afternoon naps you had when you were a kid in your grandparents’ kubo during the rainy season.
Movie theaters are places where you get to experience them in a great volume and no one will complain about the noise. With the right sound system and a film with a good sound mix, it can play the audiences’ senses, making them feel what the characters feel.
I would like to think that the Quiet Place movies are some of those examples — creature features where the monsters, despite being blind, still cause the end of human civilization with its acute sense of hearing and its insatiable thirst for blood. In this world gone silent, the few survivors have to live by a code. Stay silent and you'll be fine; make a noise and you'll be screwed.
The simplicity of the franchise's conceit is effective at first. I remember watching the first Quiet Place back in 2018, and everyone in the theater was noticeably nervous not to make a sound with the way they shifted on their seats and how they chewed their popcorn as the movie played. That particular immersion found in this theatrical experience is not easy to replicate at home.
John Krasinski and Emily Blunt from the first two Quiet Place films, directed by Krasinski himself | Images taken from IMDb
However, the franchise's commitment to its conceit can be frustrating as well. I personally found the scares in the two Quiet Place movies to be repetitive and tiresome. Watching a character accidentally make a noise, and attempt to evade the monster was initially tense, but when those two films were just a series of those similar moments, it didn't take long before I was only sighing in exasperation instead of relief during the eighteenth time a character got careless and made an “oopsie”.
Although director John Krasinski admittedly has filmmaking chops to make audiences be in the characters’ shoes (even crafting a few set-pieces that emulate Spielberg in all its extended oners and mannered blocking), it's not enough to save the conceit from growing stale.
It also didn't help when the sequel, subtitled Part II, failed to develop anything interesting to worldbuilding nor the mythology of these alien monsters. Part II revealed that the aliens came from meteors; that they cannot swim; that some survivors find sanctuary in boats and islands. This information was not sufficient enough to warrant an expansion in the sequel, but Krasinski did it anyway. Also, apparently, the monsters are called Death Angels now—which none of the films have made a mention of.
Lupita Nyong’o with Frodo the Cat in A Quiet Place: Day One | Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures International
Then it was announced that a prequel would be made—subtitled, Day One. We got a glimpse of that day in Part II's ten-minute opening prologue set in a countryside town, but this time, we're getting a whole movie about it, but this time, in New York City.
Official posters boast an ominous tagline: “Hear how it all ends.” An ordinary person would read this and think: maybe we'll learn more about the creatures. I, on the other hand, thought that this was just bait.
And guess what?
I was right.
A Quiet Place: Day One is none other than a revamped version of the prologue of Part II. As mentioned before, the Death Angels landed on the Big Apple in fiery meteors, but this time, it's depicted in an early sequence that mirrored the Towers’ fall: clouds of dust and ash blanket the streets; raging fire blasts left and right; disoriented survivors cry out for help and are immediately dispatched by the monsters now roaming in the streets.
Like the prologue of Part II, we also see this through the eyes of our protagonist, Sam (Lupita Nyong'o), before she is knocked out cold — a perspective that helps accentuate the chaos happening around even if it's hardly anything revelatory in the grand scheme of things.
When Sam has regained consciousness, the world she knew is gone, and the rest of the worldbuilding is left in the background. Military helicopters roam around the skies, advising the survivors to stay indoors. Soon after, they bomb bridges for reasons unspecified. Later on, they call on the survivors to the seaports, indicating that the aliens cannot navigate in the deep waters.
Lupita Nyong’o and Eliane Umuhire in A Quiet Place: Day One | Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures International
For a prequel, A Quiet Place: Day One doesn’t have anything enlightening to disclose. There is no broad and complex look on how these monsters cause worldwide societal collapse. Aside from a random moment where the film takes a concept off from Ridley Scott's book and gives us a glimpse on how the aliens reproduce, there is also no further expansion on the aliens’ origins and anatomy.
Instead, we get to see more and more of these aliens in action, violently scrambling through the streets, scaling up buildings just to follow the loudest noise. The scares in Day One are no different from its predecessors: another series of painfully predictable scenarios where characters accidentally make a noise, followed by a false sense of security, and then they make another noise, then cue the angry violins ‘cause all hell has broken loose!
And the more the film shows the Death Angels in action, the less interested and scared I get. They are just deadly and mindless animals who hate noise, and it makes me ask why Krasinski and company bother giving us three movies of these freaks when they fail to introduce anything substantial about them.
Joseph Quinn and Lupita Nyong’o in A Quiet Place: Day One | Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures International
This pains me all to say, because there are talented people involved here, who did what they could with the rote material that they're given.
Michael Sarnoski, who surprised the indie world with his wonderfully sad Pig, took the directorial reins for A Quiet Place: Day One from Kraminski, who took story and producing credit this time. In Day One, his hand in characterization is what prevents this inadequate prequel from sinking further down the hole.
The film’s protagonist, a terminally ill cancer patient (and bitter pessimist) named Sam, craves for a slice of pizza. And as the world falls before her eyes, she isn’t fazed like the rest of the survivors as she has lived almost her entire life facing death. In fact, she seeks to enjoy what’s definitely the last few days of her life by searching the ruined city for — you guessed it — a slice of pizza. That simple, ordinary goal makes her a compelling and relatable character to follow, and the formidable Nyong'o displays a multitude of emotions: grief, fear, desperation and joy, mostly through her eyes.
The film’s deuteragonist, Eric — played by an equally good Joseph Quinn — acts as an interesting contrast to Sam. With his aspirations to be a lawyer destroyed and now facing death constantly, he is one of many who are left lost and visibly shaken by the disastrous alien invasion. But with Sam and her unusually quiet service cat, Frodo, he finds a purpose and a firm shoulder to lean on in his newfound companions.
When Day One goes on A Quiet Place mode, it goes on a monotonous rampage of formulaic scares, unamusing chases and not-so-frightening monsters. But when Day One stops doing its usual schtick and becomes a gloomy, solemn hangout film of two people and a cat trying to make their best out of the worst situation, it hits close to a sweet spot that radiates warmth and comfort. It's clear that this is where Sarnoski's strengths lie, and I wish the film's heart wasn't so bogged down by all this noise.
