Review – A Stellar Cast Elevates ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’

In A Quiet Place: Day One, one of the loudest cities in the world—New York City—is all but decimated in the wake of the mysterious alien invasion we were introduced to several years ago in the surprise hit film, A Quiet Place. In this prequel film, the citizens of New York are left to fend for themselves amidst a hellish extraterrestrial slaughter, despite the best attempts of the world governments and military, and due to the seemingly impenetrable nature of the extra-terrestrial attackers.

Samira, a cancer patient played with carefully crafted layers by Lupita Nyong’o, and her cat Frodo are joined by English law student Eric (Joseph Quinn), who has picked an unfortunate time to study abroad and is now stranded in the United States to shelter during the invasion. The unlikely companions face a seemingly undefeatable foe in a story that expands the thrilling world that creator John Krasinski introduced in 2018.

A Quiet Place: Day One premieres June 28, 2024 in theaters.

The heart of the plot is simple—some might call it flimsy—but there’s a certain level of skill that writers John Krasinski and Michael Sarnoski show by stripping the fat a similar genre film might pack on to leave us with the performances of the incredibly gifted actors.

Lupita Nyong’o’s “Sam,” as her final unspoken wish, separates from her hospice care group to make a pilgrimage to her favorite childhood pizza place in Harlem. Somewhere along the way, she meets Joseph Quinn’s Eric and the two, joined by fate, make the perilous and uncertain journey to fulfill her dying request. Naturally, the pair learn a lot about each other, and a common fear morphs into a mutual affection, as both risk their lives across a span of some days to stay and keep each other alive; while also making a detour for Sam’s life-saving drugs.

The immediate strength of A Quiet Place: Day One is its fiercely passionate cast; the incredibly versatile Academy Award winner Nyong’o, the severely underrated Beninese powerhouse Djimon Hounsou, the scene-stealing Joseph Quinn and the always memorable Alex Wolff. This is one of those films that believes less is more. It provides a handful of actors a setup and lets them run with it, with every single tool in their arsenal. Of course, they’re in a world of CGI monsters and burning buildings, but Day One is a film about the human condition: people living and learning to love each other, and the different ways that process manifests during a global cataclysm.

Quinn holds his own alongside (and at times just edges out) the award-winning leading lady with a heart-wrenching performance as a young man training to be a lawyer who finds himself completely out of his depth in the chaos. I don’t know what personal experiences Quinn pulls from, or if he found it all in the pages of the script itself, but there’s an immutable emotional weight that he brings to each scene in the relatable responses, reactions, movements and stillness he displays. There is a scene, when Sam gives Eric directions to find the boats ferrying people off the island, but he goes into total freeze mode (as most people would!), stammering, stuttering and crying under the rainy awnings. “I’m scared,” Quinn’s Eric admits, and suddenly he becomes one of the most sympathetic leading men in horror movie history. In my eyes, Quinn’s is the performance that by far sets the standard for the film, and also for himself as an actor, proving he’s grown far past the already versatile character of Eddie Munsen of Stranger Things.

Djimon Hounsou, returning as Henri, is strong and intense as always, but as is too often the case, painfully underutilized. Nyong’o puts a lot of heart into Sam, who at first confides exclusively in her cat and nurse, but comes out of her shell to become a compassionate and unexpected heroine for Eric and several other characters throughout the film; her evolution is fascinating to watch.

One thing that I appreciate about this series—and took note of right off the bat—is that it places a very unique spotlight on people with conditions, illnesses and disabilities, from the original entries focusing on the deaf character of Regan Abbot (played by young starlet Millicent Simmonds) to Day One centering on a terminally ill cancer patient. Krasinki, who wrote and directed the first film and produced the sequel, proves his depth as a writer time and again by not just featuring these different conditions, but by implementing them into the narrative in a way that actually advances the plot (e.g. the Abott family’s use of ASL in a world where audible communication is a death sentence).

While making Nyong’o’s character terminally ill adds more complexity to an already chaotic journey, it never feels gimmicky. Instead, Krasinski approaches the health conditions with an optimistic sincerity that makes the lead characters so fascinating. The characters feel like real people, going through real things and reacting in a real way to a situation no one could be prepared for. This allows audiences to see themselves in the characters, no matter how fantastical or nightmarish the scenario.

And despite all that, Sam and Eric fight through the fear of every waking second to hit all of their goals for each other’s sake. The writing team did the audience and characters an immense favor by dodging a love story angle because, somehow, this primal type of co-dependency is much more gripping. It’s neither hierarchical nor immediately affectionate, but it is extremely intimate when it needs to be, and equally as sincere.

While the film is scored by Marco Beltrami, who does a good job placing things where they’re needed, I can’t think of any particular musical cue that stands out in the soundtrack. Perhaps the sparseness and non-descript vibe of the music was for effect, but it would’ve been interesting to hear a little more fullness and musicality when the cues appeared.

As the survivors are pulled aboard the ship departing the island by Henri, the collective sigh of relief spreads to the audience. A Quiet Place: Day One catches your attention and holds it there just as well as previous entries in the series. John Krasinki and the team did a wonderful job of thwarting my fears that consecutive entries might spoil the appeal of what made the original so game-changing. By keeping the emphasis on the people—and not revealing too much about the aliens still—we find that humanity’s fears and hopes still center around each other as much, if not moreso, than on the invaders.

Powered by enormously emotional performances and an understated chemistry between Nyong’o, Quinn, Wolff and Hounsou, A Quiet Place: Day One shows us that even in the face of the most destructive, literal inhumanities, the human spirit prevails above all, and hope for the future cannot be killed.

PROS

• Epic performances from Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn
• Extremely solid CGI
• Hard hitting action scenes and emotionally strenuous drama

CONS

• While impressively executed, the underlying story is too simplistic
• A generic, almost non-existent music score
• Needed more Djimon Hounsou

RATING – 4/5 Pocky