A Quiet Place: Day One is a Long Shot for Day Ones
The third film in the franchise speaks volumes for what went wrong
Yo! Thanks for hanging out with me. How are things? I saw two movies at the cinema over the weekend (one was a throwback) and I watched two at home for the pod, but only one will make an appearance on here. Since I’ve blasted you with philosophy and self-reflection these past few, I figured you deserve another media review. This time, it’s the latest entry in an exciting new horror universe – A Quiet Place: Day One (2024).
Two things made me apprehensive about this instalment in what has become one of my favourite franchises. One, we already saw the invasion as it happened in A Quiet Place: Part II (2020); and two, it wasn’t written or directed by John Krasinski. What I enjoy so much about the original is the intrigue from the tense opening scene before we get to live in this strange world with the resourceful Abbott family. The sequel also had a solid start, including a killer one-shot, then raises the stakes while expanding on the lore of the creatures, referred to as “death angels” in the first film. A friend recently told me that the whole concept of A Quiet Place (2018) is pretty much the same as World War Z (2013), which I also love, but in a different context – and I can’t really disagree. After seeing this prequel set in a city at the time of impact with a great number of the creatures, it’s easy to see the comparison.
However, Day One doesn’t feel like a horror movie. It’s more of a drama with action sequences and lots – and I mean lots – of crying. The two main characters, Sam and Eric, are strangers brought together by circumstance who develop a strong friendship built on thoughtful gestures. It plays out as a love story, though they don’t seem to become anything more than that and form a remarkably strong bond after spending mere days together. It was written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, who had his feature debut with Pig (2021), with a story by him and Krasinski, who also produced it with Platinum Dunes. It stars Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn with Djimon Hounsou reprising his role as Henri from Part II, though only for a few chance encounters. I also didn’t know that Alex Wolff was in it, since he doesn’t make an appearance in the trailer, and he was probably my favourite character.
The protagonist Samira, or Sam, is a contradictory and somewhat dislikeable character. I couldn’t even remember her name (I had to google it for this review). She is a self-described mean person with terminal cancer who we are meant to empathise with, yet she does little to warrant such an investment from me. Sure, she feeds some kids candy and is braver than most, but she doesn’t have to be a dick about it. Then there’s her unbelievably well-behaved cat, Frodo. It’s cute and humanising, although he never serves the story more than leading Eric to Sam. Even the moments when the cat has close shaves with the creatures aren’t that tense because we learn early on that Frodo never makes a sound, which is significantly less precarious than transporting a baby. Perhaps if felines proved to be some sort of weakness to them then it would have helped in some way, but the creatures don’t seem to acknowledge his presence.
It also irks me that we never learn anything more about Eric other than he is in New York City for law school and his parents live in Kent, England. He suddenly emerges from flooded subway stairs, which is a striking entrance, yet we still don’t know why he follows Sam instead of going home initially. It’s not that there’s a mystery to him which she finds fascinating, either; she simply doesn’t ask about him throughout the film (rude). He even ventures out to find her required medication and joins her in the pursuit of her favourite pizza restaurant, which seems ridiculous in an apocalyptic setting. Find help and supplies first, dammit! The most relatable aspect of Quinn’s character is that he suffers panic attacks, which Sam helps to allay in times of crisis. As emotive as their story tried to be, I just didn’t really care about either of them enough to be sad when they are separated in the confusing final act.
The ultimate goal for Sam and Eric is to reach the rescue boats after the city’s bridges are destroyed by the air force, an event that Henri shares with Emmett on the island in the previous film. As they trek across the desolate cityscape in search for pizza, they must hide from the death angels at every turn and communicate in whispers and writing. To be fair, Sam is dying and can’t traverse great distances at the best of times, let alone without her transdermal patches, so a treacherous journey for food isn’t too preposterous. Eric on the other hand is just a scared student who has lost his identity, following her around like a lost puppy until she literally guides him by the hand to the river. The bulk of the plot shows the two looking out for each other and proving their worth, finding solace in the freedom from their claustrophobic lives that the attack ironically provides.
Of course, the death angels also get plenty of screentime and close ups – and there’s a lot of them. It even shows them eating and sleeping at times, which feels weird for an alien invasion flick (yes, I know the xenomorph naps in the final act of Alien). Their acute hearing and armoured skin enables them to go on a chaotic rampage through the city, wreaking havoc and leaving a path of destruction in their wake. Why are they here? Well, that’s still left unanswered, but they are presumably hostile pests that crash-landed on Earth via space debris seen falling from the sky in a fiery shower. Or perhaps they were sent by other aliens to cull the majority of the population before taking over the planet? We may never know, and I’m okay with that. Unfortunately, it didn’t really explore the overarching narrative any further than that, but at least we got to see how something that was mentioned earlier happened.
Day One also suffers from giving us inconsistent rules for how much noise is too much. At some points, minor sounds alert the creatures from blocks away, particularly in reverberant spaces like subway tunnels and office buildings. Then there’s one scene where hundreds of people are marching through the streets toward the river and it’s not the shuffling feet but a scream that attracts them. The thunderstorm was a nice touch, as the rain would make it difficult for the death angels to locate them, although they choose to take shelter instead of make their move during the downpour. The characters learn about being quiet and the evacuation from military helicopters flying overhead playing recorded instructions on how to survive. I can forgive this blatant information because the audience already knows these things, and the first two films are set in rural areas where news travels slower, but it’s just not as interesting.
Despite the high stakes and volatile environment, it doesn’t hold a candle to the suspense of its predecessors. The only tense moment that had me cringing didn’t even involve a death angel. Sam is hiding underneath a car that gets a punctured tyre and slowly crushes her leg as it deflates. There’s a similar scene where a briefcase is caught in a revolving door as Sam and Eric are running away that relies more on speed than sound to get you worked up, but I want moments that make me hold my breath with the characters like I’m playing Alien: Isolation. Also, the only effective jump scare was a dream sequence, which felt like I had been cheated (even though it still got me). It’s a small gripe, but I was disappointed that there were no callbacks to earlier moments in the film too, like Chekhov’s nail in the original or the dive sign in the sequel. Then again, it (unfortunately) wasn’t written and directed by John Krasinski.
It probably comes across that I very much didn’t enjoy this movie, though that’s not the case! I had fun watching people hide from – and be killed by – the death angels, it just wasn’t what I expected from an A Quiet Place prequel. But it seems like an unnecessary instalment since we’ve already seen most of what happens in Day One in the other films. In saying that, I’ll always look forward to living in this universe vicariously through the characters onscreen – I just wish that they were more interesting.