Director: Michael Sarnoski
Stars: Lupita Nyong’o, Djimon Hounsou, Joseph Quinn
A terminal hospice patient with few requests left in life, Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), is resigned with gallows humour to her fate, so long as she can relive some nostalgic creature comforts in peace. One particular sense-memory evocation is pizza in the city. New York City. Tricked into joining a day excursion to a marionette show by kindly nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff), Sam – and her scene-stealing cat Frodo – find themselves in Manhattan on the day of a massive alien invasion that the initiated will be well-versed with from the other two A Quiet Place films. While the masses shriek and panic and head for the barges amassing to ferry them out of danger, Sam has other plans. One last trip home to Harlem, for old times’ sake.
John Krasinski hands over the reins to Pig director Michael Sarnoski for this prequel tale in the Quiet Place universe, and so too the sensibility that typified the first two outings is reformed. Sarnoski’s take is still tied to sentiment, but it’s not as cosily indebted to Spielberg as Krasinski’s iterations, instead channelling something a hair more elegiac and rueful. His is a more soulful, downbeat apocalypse, one which can’t help but resurrect a few ghosts of 9/11 as it showers Manhattan blocks in a blanket of ashes.
Krasinski overegged his own pudding with A Quiet Place Part II (which itself included a Day One flashback), so its reasonable to suggest that this prequel wasn’t the most necessary-seeming IP extension on offer this year, but Sarnoski’s tonal tweak does enough to refresh the material. Third movies have a habit of being about acceptance, and that’s a truism kept alive here, especially in Sam’s agency to go out during Armageddon on precisely her own terms.
Along the way she snares a straggler in the form of frightened law student Eric (Joseph Quinn), quite literally wet behind the ears from a swim through the city’s rapidly submerging subway system. His immediate devotion to her muddies Sam’s plan to disconnect from humanity completely (visualised in a foolhardy march against the grain). It’s an important distinction to note that she is not suicidal. When they need to fight to survive, she’s resourceful and smart and driven to do so. The when and the where are her decisions to make.
As with the previous films, sound is a killer. So much of the story is told visually, but not without assistance. Sarnoski brings over Alexis Grapsas who scored Pig to give Day One its distinct aural compliment to Marco Beltrami’s work, which made the first two films urgently driven thrillers. Grapsas is less bombastic, which helps make this one feel eerie, desolate, spidery like its monsters. For their part, its mostly business-as-usual. For all the intimate scale of Sarnoski’s focus, he does provide an intriguing detour into lore, when Frodo steers Eric too close for comfort to an alien landing zone. That the information learned here isn’t expanded upon suggests further episodes are intended…
The biggest draw here is Nyong’o – so stunning for Jordan Peele in Us – and her return to the lead in a genre effort feels long overdue. Naturally, she kills it. You feel Sam’s belligerence as much as her panic (usually for Frodo, the most well-behaved cat in Manhattan)*, while her quest exemplifies what makes these movies work best.
Apocalyptic alien invasion stories (and really half of all disaster movies) commonly have an eye on the macro. What’s the global effect (and Day One does infer that this is happening everywhere). These movies go micro, zeroing in one a handful of people to tell the personal repercussions. Here, through Sam, we’re given a story of opportunity, one that takes time out for a truly bittersweet and performative closing sentiment before Sarnoski dashes us to the end with a simple but effective bit of chase and suspense work.
For his part, Quinn walks a fine line opposite Nyong’o and he does it well. Eric could have been too snivelling, too cowardly to court audience engagement, but instead he’s humanistic. A lost little boy who’ll also protect his mother. So the odd couple dynamic works. But who are we kidding. The real star(s) here turn out to be around a foot tall and answer to the names Nico and Schnitzel.
*I know this is a deal breaker for some, so HERE’S THE SPOILER…
…The cat makes it.
The Lost Highway Hotel 