Review of the movie A Quiet Place: Day One

The 2018 horror film A Quiet Place managed to reveal the talent of John Krasinski as a director. The actor, whom most of the audience knew for his role of Jim in the American version of The Office (2005-2013), gave us a fascinating and unusual horror film, whose key concept made even people far from the genre hold their breath while watching it. This resulted in a box office that exceeded the shooting budget by 20 times, so no one was worried about the future of the franchise.

Krasinski has already directed A Quiet Place Part II (2020), in which the original story was developed in a natural way. However, in 2020, it was additionally announced that the series will be expanded with a prequel that will show the first days of the monsters’ invasion of Earth. In the summer of 2024, A Quiet Place: Day One will be released in theaters in the summer of 2424. And it is a worthy addition to the media franchise that can evoke powerful emotions.

The film focuses on the first days of the alien invasion, when humanity did not understand how to resist the aliens. New York, one of the world’s most notorious cities, became the central location, which creates an additional layer of tension and even irony for the plot. The protagonist Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) and her cat find themselves right in the middle of an invasion. Now she has to survive in the chaos around her, but there is a nuance: Sam is terminally ill, so her moral views and priorities, even at the end of the world, differ significantly from those of healthy people.

The basis of the concept of A Quiet Place: Day One is the creative use of silence and sounds. Monsters react to even the slightest sound vibrations, so the characters hardly ever speak, simple movements can be deadly, and behavior has to be adapted to the sounds of the environment. “A Quiet Place 2” departed from these ideas a bit, but “Day One” returns to them again, and with new strength.

Because the film does not show a suburban area, but New York, where noise always exists. No one yet understands how to resist strong and fast monsters. That’s why we added tangible inclusions of disaster movies to the elements of thrillers and horror. Sam finds himself in the middle of a situation with no way out. People around him are going crazy, trying to survive somehow, but most attempts are doomed in advance. A Quiet Place: Day One is a tangibly depressing movie, which also has enough sirens and explosions to make it physically difficult to watch in modern Ukraine.

However, most of the events still take place in almost complete silence. Because of this, the sound direction emphasizes sounds that in other films would have passed the audience by. It would seem that the contrast between silence and loud sounds is one of the classic methods of influencing people in horror. But A Quiet Place: Day One works so well with it that almost no one in the theater said a word during the screening. In today’s culture of movie-going, this kind of attitude is a rarity, which proves how well the film crew managed to reach our hearts.

The circumstances surrounding the protagonist enhance the emotional impact of the story. Sam just wants to eat pizza, which may seem strange and absurd at first. But the more we spend time with her, the better we begin to understand her worldview. And an ordinary pizza at the end of the world becomes almost the only bright spot.

Sam will not be alone all the time. In addition to the cat, she will be joined by lawyer Eric. He is not the bravest person in the world, and he suffers from panic attacks. The interaction between Sam and Eric is another good reason to watch the movie. It is sincere and emotional, and you believe in their fleeting friendship from the very first scenes. Against the backdrop of total chaos, the relationship between the two central characters inspires faith that humanity is not so bad.

A Quiet Place: Day One demonstrates very well that even in the most hopeless moments of life, we should look for something good. That joy has always been, is and will be found in simple things, in pleasant memories and close people around us. Yes, these are naive thoughts, but they work in contrast to the genre and setting of the movie. So be prepared to be touched by the ending.

But to do this, we need to give cinema some slack. After all, its most problematic area is the logic of events. If you start studying why the monster hears some sounds and seems to completely ignore others, you can become very disappointed in the script. Thus, A Quiet Place continues to be a story in which everything rests on a single central concept, which is also not very well communicated to the audience. Beyond that, the movie is not very good at working with setting and lore.

There are also some problems with the horror component. A Quiet Place: Day One is a really scary movie, even knowing why it is scary. It’s a rare case when the same director’s method of silence works three times in a row. But sometimes the characters behave too naively and playfully, as if they are deliberately causing tense situations around them without a desire to survive.

However, there is a possibility that even such unreasonableness of some actions only reinforces the overall impression of the story about people who found themselves face to face with a powerful, unknown enemy. A Quiet Place: Day One is primarily a movie about emotions and worldview. It’s better not to look at it with a pragmatic view, because then it will turn out that as a prequel it doesn’t add anything special to the franchise. It’s a simple story that still works because it consists of real feelings that can exist even during a catastrophe. Perhaps they can exist only during a catastrophe.