A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)
I like the Quiet Place movies. A story built around blind alien invaders who are super-tuned into sound is a very interesting idea, and it’s hard not to get caught up in it. I’ll admit, though, that I keep hoping the story will move forward sometimes. We’ve seen how the aliens land. We know that they’re attracted to sound. When do we get to kick some alien tail?
Not in A Quiet Place: Day One, that’s for sure, but I liked it so much I didn’t care.
Sam is a patient at a hospice home in Brooklyn, and she’s not the nicest person. Alan, the activities nurse, keeps trying to include her, and after a group support session he invites Sam to join he and some of the other patients on a trip into Manhattan to see a show. Sam says she’ll go if they get pizza, but she’s got to change and feed her support cat, Frodo, first.
Much to Sam’s chagrin, the show is a marionette show, but at least it isn’t terrible. It all fades into the background, though, when Alan has to get everyone back on the bus because there’s trouble. The aliens have landed.
Sam is thrust into a crazy odyssey across the city, where she sees people in various degrees of lethargy. No one can talk or make the slightest sound. The only other thing anyone knows is that the aliens can’t swim.
Just as in the other Quiet Place movies, there’s a lot of sneaking around and hiding. Sam meets an Englishman, Eric, who’s a law student. At first Sam doesn’t want Eric around, but she finally relents, and the two of them get to be friends. Sam gradually tells Eric a little bit about herself in the middle of all the hurry-up-and-wait.
We also have lots of time to thrill to the miraculous adventures of Frodo the Wonder Cat. I don’t know what life this cat is on, but he avoids the aliens with ease, finds Sam without breathing too hard, and somehow traverses a city full of dirt, fire, and ash all while maintaining a blindingly clean coat.
Oh, and he can apparently breathe underwater, because despite getting dunked a few times he doesn’t freak out. Frodo’s a plucky fella and he gets more screen time than either Sam or Eric.
I really enjoyed Day One, and again, I didn’t care that the story doesn’t seem to be moving forward. It’s very well-done, the acting is excellent, and in a way it’s kind of a prequel because we get to see some familiar faces from past installments. Look for Djimon Hounsou, for instance, in an all-too-small bit part that still impresses, regardless of its brevity.
What’s interesting about a movie like this is that it forces an audience to be absolutely silent, almost like subliminal audience participation. Plus, there’s so little sound in the film that straining to hear what is there is completely natural. It makes for a unique theater experience, although it’s kind of a waste of D-Box or X-D.
Another flaw the movie avoids is the exposition dump. The aliens landing and sound attracting them are all we need to know about the current stakes, and the atmosphere of Manhattan, with the ash, scattered papers and broken glass and so on, eerily echoes 9-11 right after the Towers fell. That alone gives the movie emotional resonance.
Instead of exposition, the movie lets out bits about its characters in other ways, or at least it does about Sam, oftentimes via objects and places. We find out why she’s so adamant to get pizza besides a love for that particular food. We find out something about her background. We get to see a little of her life before she was a terminal cancer patient. It also changes the trajectory of a story when a main character has terminal cancer, because among other things, she’s got nothing to lose.
There’s even a very clever moment of fun that takes place between Sam and Eric that I won’t spoil. Everything in the movie has a purpose, and nothing about it is bombastic in terms of character development. The important thing is that we come to care about Sam, Eric and Frodo.
Maybe we didn’t see some alien tail kicked this time around, but that’s just fine. I hope the Quiet Place franchise gives us more of the same, and if they keep building the story as deftly as they did in Day One, the payoff is going to be epic.
A Quiet Place: Day One is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.
My grade: A+
Principal Cast: Joseph Quinn, Lupita Nyong’o, Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsou, Thara Shoon, Thea Butler, Alfie Todd, Elijah Ungvary, Alexander John, Elaine Umuhire, Ronnie Le Drew, Choy-Ling Man, Takunda Khumalo, Benjamin Wong, Gavin Fleming, Michael Roberts, Avy-Berry Worrall, Cain Aiden, Nico and Schnitzel
Directed by Mike Sarnoski.
Written by Mike Sarnoski, Johm Krasinski and Bryan Woods.