A Quiet Place was my first venture into horror when it came to watching it in a cinema. I’m a known scaredy cat, but A Quiet Place opened up my eyes to a world of horror in a way that I’ve never seen before. Your first instinct when seeing something scary is to scream, and personally for me, to binge eat some popcorn, but when watching A Quiet Place, all that goes out the window as it feels like you can’t make a single noise in the screening.
A Quiet Place is sprawling into this huge franchise, which started as one film, became two, and now has its third installment, which comes in the form of a prequel. It’s also getting its first AAA video game later this year. While it wasn’t John Krasinski’s first film as director, it was the film that gained him attention as a filmmaker, and ever since, he’s been doing an amazing job.
For its third installment, John Krasinski has stepped back from the director’s chair and instead came on as a producer, which he also was for the last two films and still helped provide this emotionally humane story for the prequel.
A Quiet Place: Day One is a prequel to A Quiet Place (2018), taking place during the first day of the alien apocalypse that we see occur in the previous films. We follow Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), a cancer patient who gets thrown into the middle of the apocalypse as she searches across New York for the one thing that will bring her happiness. On her journey are her adorable cat and Eric (Joseph Quinn), whom she comes across.
We meet Sam in a hospice, with little left to live and no idea whether she’ll be able to witness tomorrow. It’s a cold and sad opening to the film, but it sets the tone perfectly for what to expect from this film, and while it is a prequel to A Quiet Place (2018), it feels very different thematically. The previous films took their time to focus on family and survival. Survival is very much an important part of this film as well, but it takes time to focus on finding your inner peace and building these bonds with people who may very well be the last person you see or even potentially die with.
What sets this apart from the other films isn’t just the themes but also its setting. It’s unfortunate, but personally, the first two films feel more tense and terrifying as we’re entrapped in these small locations, in the middle of nowhere, in situations that aren’t the best when you live in a world where you can’t make a sound. A Quiet Place: Day One can still be tense, and it did make me jump a few times, but the city setting isn’t used to the best of its capabilities. There are two great scenes where the city feels like it’s being utilised, and one of them comes early in the film before Sam meets Eric, and the second comes in the final act as the film prepares for its close. It’s a more character driven film, focusing on our two main characters before anything else. Unlike the last two films, we don’t learn anything new about the creatures, which we know as Death Angels, but that’s to be expected as this is a prequel.
While Michael Sarnoski wrote the screenplay, and, may I add, it’s beautifully written with so many moments that make you fall in love with the characters, it’s rare to get horror films that have such well-developed and fully fleshed-out characters that you grow to care about throughout the film. The story was crafted by Michael Sarnoski and John Krasinski, and this film proves how wonderful of a storyteller Krasinski is, and he doesn’t get enough recognition for the stories he creates. From switching from a horror film that puts fear into your soul by making you not want to make a single sound from watching to creating a horror film set in the same universe but bringing us these two characters who were destined to come across each other, allowing us to learn more about who they are, their values, and just see their friendship bloom throughout the film. There’s no better way to put it than to say that it’s not only a horrifying story, but it’s emotional, touching, and will leave you in happy tears by the end.
With an outstanding story, script, and even an eerie and intense score by Alexis Grapsas, this film wouldn’t be the film it is without the astonishing performances from both Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn. I had high expectations for Lupita, and she fully surpassed those with the powerful performance that she gives as Sam, a character that we get to learn so much about. By the end, she gives the most heartbreaking performance that is unlike anything we’ve seen in any A Quiet Place film before. On the other hand, I didn’t have many expectations for Joseph Quinn. I had loved him in Stranger Things, but this was going to be the first project I had seen in him aside from that show, and it was going to test him in many ways. While I have a few issues with his character, and that solely comes down to the writing, Joseph doesn’t pull away by giving it his all, and he’s proven that he’s someone we should be keeping an eye on.
There are two other stars that completely steal the show, the first being Djimon Hounsou. At most, he has 7–10 minutes of full screen time, but he completely steals the show any time he’s on screen. He returns as his character from A Quiet Place Part 2 (2020), where he unfortunately met a grim demise, but it was great to see how this film was able to connect story branches with this one specific character.
The final star of the film is the cat. This cat manages to not only look cute throughout the entire film but also helps bring comfort to our character. He’s a true star of the film, and I apologise for ever thinking the cat wouldn’t make it past the opening act of the film.
