A Quiet Place: Day One (15)

Sightless creatures, which hunt by sound, arrive on our planet as a meteor shower. Two strangers, Sam and Eric, bear witness to the slaughter when these extra-terrestrial predators crash-land in new York City and hunt screaming humans without mercy. To stay alive, the duo must stay quiet but in a world of technological conveniences, that is easier unsaid than done. Sam insists on bringing her beloved pet cat Frodo, increasing the probability of the tiniest sound betraying their location.

LondonNet Film Review

A Quiet Place: Day One (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Silence was golden – and imperative for survival – in director John Krasinski’s 2018 post-apocalyptic horror A Quiet Place about a family combating sightless creatures, which hunt by sound. In the sequel, a tense opening sequence offered us a tantalising glimpse of the moment the otherworldly menace arrived on our planet as a meteor shower and interrupted a little league baseball game in the quiet town of Millbrook…

The battle between puny homo sapiens and merciless beasts known as Death Angels moves on to the mean streets of New York City in a nerve-jangling prequel written and directed by Michael Sarnoski that, sadly, affirms the law of diminishing returns with movie franchises. A Quiet Place: Day One quickens the pulse in fits and bursts with breathlessly orchestrated action sequences including a frantic descent into flooded tunnels with echoes of the Alien franchise. A special effects-laden bloodbath is inevitable once we relocate to a bustling metropolis where noise levels regularly reach 90 decibels (equivalent to a persistent human scream).

We have held our breaths for a home birth in a bathtub and a nail through a foot so the tension is easier to withstand third time around. Stakes are not as high when ambient noise (thunder, rain cascading off rooftops) and screeching car alarms can conceal screams, whimpers and whispered expository dialogue. Sarnoski’s script handpicks when a noise will attract attention or pass unnoticed to support a steadily increasing body count.

The emotional fulcrum is terminally ill cancer patient Sam (Lupita Nyong’o), who self-manages her pain with fentanyl skin patches as a resident of Little Firs Hospice Centre. During a day trip to the city to watch a theatre performance with nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff) and her emotional support cat Frodo, Sam witnesses our terrifying first contact with the Death Angels. Calmly resigned to her demise, Sam embarks on a lonely trek to Harlem to enjoy one final slice of pizza from the restaurant where her late father took her as a child. En route, she bonds with panic-stricken British lawyer Eric (Joseph Quinn), who states the obvious when he surmises, “I think the world may be ending…”.

A Quiet Place: Day One is a ruthlessly efficient thriller punctuated by infrequent jump scares, anchored by Nyong’o’s heartrending performance (Quinn materialises around the halfway point). Instances of stillness in Sarnoski’s picture are the most impactful, especially the touching scenes of compassion and dependency between Sam and Eric in the face of certain death. A returning character provides narrative glue between the three instalments so far, with a fourth in development that will presumably give more context to an otherwise superfluous scene of a Death Angels nest. Keep calm and carry on with the slaughter.

– Kim Hu