There was a lot of groundwork laid in the first two films in A Quiet Place series but aside from flashbacks we never properly saw the day that the aliens came to Earth, crashlanding in New York and causing havoc. Naturally as all franchises must we get a flashback prequel that showcases ground zero of these horrific events, taking the premise of an alien that is blind, but hunts by sound, and decimates humanity one by one in quick succession with terrifying speed. Caught in the middle is Sam, played by Lupita Nyong’o, a woman on borrowed time struggling to find the will to live before the world is over. And what happens to Sam then – when the world actually ends? She has a therapy cat to look after, but beyond that – nothing and nobody. She’s alone.
Michael Sarnoski steps up to the template of big budget horror after handling the Nicholas Cage drama Pig with confidence needed to deliver; but fails to make this film feel terrifying. We know all the tricks of the monsters now and we are ahead of the characters. The mystery isn’t there. The suspense, the fear isn’t there – it’s not really a horror story but a bombastic disaster epic akin to The Day After Tomorrow or something on a grander scale like Spielberg's War of the Worlds; removed from the quieter more remote focus of the tenseness of the first two films of A Quiet Place, which drew more from The Last of Us in inspiration. Here it's a-to-b disaster after disaster with a firm emphasis on the human characters; but the real star is Nyong’o’s Sam – the actresses’ acting ability with her eyes alone is fantastic and able to convey fear that next to her, Joseph Quinn feels as bland as his character, from Kent, England – because nobody would know where Kent is otherwise – and it feels like such an odd choice for him to come from.
Not enough depth is given to Quinn’s Eric and the bond between Sam and Eric feels stiff, forced and awkward. Their mission to get pizza at the end of the world unconvincing and corny; even if it means everything to Sam. That said – it’s refreshing to get a story like this where the characters accept that they’re doomed, and I think I would be too in this universe, there’s no point in carrying on, removed from all sound, it’s just a shame the monster cliches are all over this film it feels like what would happen if you mashed all the classics into one film and spat them out again. And the cat; whilst amazing, of course it’s a cat, became the centre of one too many narrative structures to take your attention away from everything else – and what’s perhaps A Quiet Place: Day One’s most indicative point is that the cat is the most interesting character of them all. There’s no contest. Eric treats Sam as a mother figure rather than a partner; a different change of dynamic given how helpless he is – but the film can never bring you to care about either of them.
It's a movie about how the heroine’s depression makes her ideal for the apocalypse, but the arc feels a tad too sentimental and boring in its approach to really offer anything new. There’s nothing here that we haven’t seen before even before we get to the first two Quiet Place films. There’s no surprise. There’s no drama. It’s just entirely mind-numbingly predictable; essentially falling victim to the same tropes of the zombie films that these films essentially are. The switch of pace to New York really hurt this one as it looks like all the other 9/11 New York-inspired disaster movies now; smoke and ash, screams of the dying and the fallen – its imagery is instantly reminiscent and shows the casualty of what happens when the stakes become bigger. Krasinski kept things small and personal; yet Sarnoski can’t help but fall into the trap of making everything feel a bit too big?
VERDICT: 4/10
