Jonah Naplan June 27, 2024
Replacing John Krasinski, who helped to originate the franchise itself and also helmed the first two films, Michael Sarnoski writes and directs “A Quiet Place: Day One” with a keen eye for both terror and emotion, even if he can’t quite seem to put those two pieces together efficiently. It’s a sure good thing that he’s working with such a strong pair of lead performers who are absolutely game for everything Sarnoski throws at them, and are fully prepared to explore all the nuances within themselves as the narrative requires. Because the first “Quiet Place” from 2018 and its resulting sequel from 2021 were both so good, they inevitably left us asking tons of questions about the world our characters inhabit and how it became that way in the first place. “Day One” answers many of these—what it looked like when the monsters plummeted down to Earth, how the government first reacted, what average civilians did in response, etc—but still leaves much open to debate or doesn’t even offer up the possibility that there is an answer at all. Unlike the other “Quiet Place”s, we get to see the monsters in full focus as they attack and destroy cities, dirtying the frame with their strange, angular bodies that screech and howl with a terrifying tremor. We’re never told why they’ve come or from where, but they’re here whether we like it or not, and the characters just have to deal with it.
The film centers around Sam (a searing Lupita Nyong’o), a poet living with cancer in a hospice facility just outside of Manhattan. We get the feeling early on that she’s completely lost all will to live, only hanging on to her dear cat named Frodo and occasionally confiding in her support group leader Reuben (Alex Wolff) because that’s all she’s got left. Traveling into the city to see a show with a group of fellow patients, Sam wanders off, searching for a slice of pizza from a favorite childhood joint which we can only assume sort of acts as her “last meal.” Of course, that’s when the monsters arrive, smashing and crashing their way into our world, and shocking one of the loudest cities (the film tells us via title-card at the beginning that the volume of NYC typically roams around 90 decibels) into silence. Amidst this madness enters a couple of new characters: Henri (Djimon Hounsou), whom fans might recognize from “A Quiet Place Part II,” a wary but morally upstanding man who’s willing to make bold choices to protect his family, and also Eric (Joseph Quinn), a frightened law student from London who begins to follow Sam around.
Most characters live inside a morally gray area where no choice is necessarily good nor bad considering the uncertainties of how you’d actually act in a terrifying scenario such as this one. Sarnoski knows how to disturb and unnerve the viewer, rhyming images of our country’s landmarks toppling over in balls of fire with the personal turmoils between characters. Sections of “Day One” teeter on more serious disaster cinema like “Cloverfield” and “Greenland,” displaying the United States at its most frightened and helpless for what to do. The real scare comes from realizing that we may not be able to recover and respond fast enough before we’re thrown another hit. Sarnoski’s endearing work in “Pig,” a great film about a truffle hunter played by Nicolas Cage who scours Portland, Oregon after his pet swine is stolen from him, plays into his direction here too, particularly in scenes that suddenly become more emotionally resonant because a certain shot was included or a character was held on-screen for a few frames longer.
It helps that he’s working with two excellent actors at the forefront of this melancholic narrative. Nyong’o is working at the top of her game in perhaps the best performance of her career as a woman who’s questioning how much energy and effort she should put into living life since she’s going to die soon anyway. She doesn’t speak very much; the performance mainly relies on facial expressions and reactions, communicating all the movie’s mature themes and ideas about grief, longing, and the intrinsic values of life and human nature. Closeup after closeup displays her tired features, our window into how this apocalypse affects everyday people. Similarly arresting is Quinn, who struts around this movie with all the confidence of a man who has just been fired from his job (even though Quinn, the actor, looks to be very confident in his ability to befit this unconfident role). It’s a difficult part to play because his desperation could easily make him seem untrustworthy and perhaps even unlikeable, but Quinn manages to find the intricacies of the character, making this central duet work in the same way as Krasinski and Emily Blunt’s husband and wife in the first “Quiet Place.”
It’s perhaps because of these very characters that the scares in “Day One” are as effective as they are. This is no doubt the scariest movie in the franchise; on top of caring about these characters and their survival, we’re constantly keeping an eye out for the little nooks and crannies of the city because at any moment something could jump out when we least expect it. The movie deals in jumpscare after jumpscare in an effort to keep us on our toes, and the technique is often effective because we never really feel like the characters, and, to that end, we, are “in the clear.” A scene in a flooded subway is particularly chilling and another in a mall stacked with windows knows all the right beats to hit. Even Frodo the cat gets his moments to fake-jumpscare our characters.
Yet with all these great individual elements, Sarnoski never quite finds a coherent way to meld them all together. At only 99 minutes in length, “A Quiet Place: Day One” is simply too short to allow for much world-building and it doesn’t really become intentional with what it wants to say until the final stretch, leaving the middle act gasping for air as it attempts to both set up character beats that will be paid off later on and scare the viewer through a series of increasingly intense setpieces. In a world of blockbusters with such bloated runtimes, it’s rare for me to say that any movie should be longer. “A Quiet Place: Day One” is it.
“PG-13 horror” has become a dreaded phrase in this modern era we live in of creepypastas turned into teen-friendly films and largely bloodless high-concept Blumhouse. But the “Quiet Place” franchise has remained the top-of-the-line when it comes to the love of sheer suspense in place of shock-value violence. We don’t get great movies like it very often. “Day One” maintains superiority by being consistently entertaining and scary from beginning to end. If the compelling human characters don’t shut you up, then those monsters sure will.
Now playing in theaters.