A Quiet Place: Day One – Film Review
I loved the original A Quiet Place – I gave it a rare five stars – and no sequel or spin-off prequel has been able to recapture that magic, including A Quiet Place: Day One.
After two outings with the Abbott family, this film focuses on some new characters and their experience with the alien apocalypse. It follows Sam (Lupita Nyong’o), a cancer sufferer who is visiting New York City on a trip with her hospice when the blind aliens with super sensitive hearing crash down to Earth. Sam – accompanied by her support cat Frodo – has to make it to her old childhood neighbourhood of Harlem without making a sound. She soon finds company in Eric (Joseph Quinn), a British law school student all alone in the city.
After focusing on a family unit, it was nice to see a new character dynamic during the disaster. While the story felt rather slight overall, I liked watching these two strangers becoming each other’s support system. Michael Sarnoski, who gave us such rich characters and relationships in Pig, delivers on the human front once again in his first blockbuster. He doesn’t forget the people among the spectacle and helps ground the heightened chaos in reality.
But there are still plenty of big, loud spectacle moments and tense encounters with the aliens to satisfy those who are looking for that. It does feel like we’ve already seen it before with the opening of A Quiet Place Part II but it was still exciting to watch. I must admit that it wasn’t scary though (it’s more of a survival thriller) and we see too much of the aliens, which is never a good idea.
Nyong’o and Quinn are both excellent in their roles, communicating beautifully through their large emotional eyes. I was particularly impressed by Nyongo’o and Sam’s desire to have a moment of nostalgia, happiness and joy. It’s rare to see a lead character with a terminal illness and this gives the film a fresh perspective. She has already been fighting for survival so the stakes are different for her.
The only character connecting Day One to the main series is Djimon Hounsou. In Part II, he was an unnamed man leading an island colony, but here, he is called Henri. He had very little screen time and not much to do, but it was nice to see a familiar face.
While the actors are all great, every scene is stolen by the cat Frodo. Step aside, Messi, here are new animal performers in town, Schnitzel and Nico! The cat is very much a character in the film – he has so much to do and he’s quite the liability but he’s so beautiful. The best performance by an animal so far this year.
I wanted to like A Quiet Place: Day One more but I think the novelty of this concept is wearing off.
In cinemas from Friday 28th June