A Quiet Place: Day One

When New York City comes under attack from an alien invasion, a woman dying of cancer must navigate the chaos and find a way to safety for herself, her cat, and the other survivors she meets along the way. Soon enough, they learn that if they don’t remain absolutely silent, the vicious alien invaders will follow any noise they make, and find them.

I was a little wary going into this film.

A Quiet Place: Day One is a prequel to the main story in the Quiet Place franchise, a “day one” story, if you will, and as a general rule, prequels are almost never any good. Due to their very nature, the ending of a prequel’s story is already written in stone before the film even starts, which that the story can’t help but be narratively inert. That’s especially true when it’s story like this, which doesn’t involve any of the characters or events—besides the alien invasion, of course—that appear in the main story. But even if it had, the one thing you can count on in a prequel movie is, whatever the main issue is, it’s not going to get worked out by the end of the film. We know this, because we’ve already seen all the movies that take place after it, so we already know what’s going to happen. Because of this, it’s hard to make a story that’s interesting and engaging. This is why there are so few good prequels.

But at the same time, this film was directed by Michael Sarnoski, who directed Pig, a film that I absolutely loved, so, sure, why not… I’m in.

I’ll give it a fair shake.

But then I found out that the film features a kitty in peril. I generally don’t give a shit if kids are in peril in films. I mean, Michael Jordan had it right, y’know?

But kitties? Or doggies? Or hamsters? Or hedgehogs? Or Red Pandas? Or that Porcupine that really likes to eat pumpkin? No sir, I do not like that.

But the good news, the cat is just fine at the end of the film. Even better, after seeing this film, I think it’s fair to say that this film is really all about the cat, that he’s our hero, in fact, and his name is Frodo.

Frodo is a service animal, a working man, dedicated to taking care of his human, a woman dying of cancer named Sam. This the most sacred of duties, the most noble of obligations, and it is one that Frodo does not take lightly, and certainly does not shirk, not even in the face of Armageddon, not even in the face of an alien invasion raining down out of the clear blue sky. So, we follow Frodo, along with his human, Sam, and a revolving gaggle of other humans, as he shepherds his noisy, clumsy charges through a dying city, all while the world ends all around them.

His, is the hero's journey.

But other than that, for the most part, A Quiet Place: Day One is basically just a movie of jump scares and waiting for jump scares. It’s a movie that is trying to be about the inevitability of death, the unfairness of life, the fragility of the world, the things that truly matter, and the power of being able to go out on your own terms, but mostly it’s just Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need, the movie.

Really, the main problem with this film is... it's just not all that exciting.

The stakes are obvious here, sure, but they never actually feel threatening, and that’s mostly because the geography of the action scenes and the choreography of the action scenes all feels a bit off somehow, or not tight enough, maybe. I don't know. Maybe it's the way it's shot. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s a prequel. Whatever the issue is specifically, this movie as a whole simply isn't all that exciting, or all that scary. And honestly, I probably wouldn't have minded the rest of the film's failings, if the action and tension had been all around better, so that’s a big issue.

There's definitely a couple of good moments in this film, like when a pair of children hide in a park fountain, using the fountain’s noise as cover. That’s clever and scary, but mostly these good moments highlight the problem… That while the film is never really boring, it doesn't deliver on its obvious loftier aspirations, and it also doesn't quite deliver on its more expected visceral ones. It touches on a lot of interesting ideas, and it has potentially interesting moments, but it only brushes up against them, and then it moves on.

Somewhat related, the film also spends too much time focusing on the minor characters that pop in and out of the film, and that too-heavy focus not only feels weird in the moment, the ending really highlights how the film just wasn’t able to make the audience really care about these minor characters.

The film’s other main problem really is the most expected one… that this is a prequel. Like I said, because this is a prequel that doesn’t involve the main story, not only does this mean there is definitely not going to be any kind of resolution to this alien invasion story, it also means, as far as the larger story is concerned, that it doesn't really matter if these characters survive. They aren't a part of the larger story, so who cares what happens to them? It‘s kind of like how you always knew Mace Windu was going to die in the Star Wars Prequels, simply because he was the only main character who we didn’t know what ended up happening to them. The main difference here is, every character in this film is Mace Windu. So, being that this film is just a pointless side-edition to the larger story… it has no real reason to exist at all.

It’s just wasted narrative.

Exacerbating this issue, there's also too little story in general, which means, even for a relatively short film like this—hovering around 90 minutes—it feels rushed.

I will say that I do love that Lupita Nyong'o seems to love genre films.

Not only has she appeared in the MCU's Black Panther films, but also in Jordan Peele's underappreciated sophmore effort, Us, as well as the cute little zombie film, Little Monsters. She was also the incredibly poorly conceived Yoda stand-in meets "good" gangster trope of a character, Maz Kanata, in the shockingly disappointing Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, And that's not even mentioning all the voice-acting she does. She's very quietly becoming a genre film regular, and while I feel like we nerds do not deserve her talent, I'll take it.

Still, while she definitely brings more power to this film than it deserves, and I appreciate her effort, I do hope she makes better choices than this in the future.

We shall see.

In the end, A Quiet Place: Day One is a decent attempt, but it's ultimately a failure, and really, Frodo is the best part. That aside, at four films now, I think it's fair to say that this franchise has very quietly run out of juice.