Movie Review: 'A Quiet Place: Day One'

A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

Directed by Michael Sarnoski

Written by Michael Sarnoski

Starring Lupita N'Yongo, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsou

Release Date June 28th, 2024

Published July 5th, 2024

Lupita N'Yongo stars in A Quiet Place: Day One as Sam, a woman dying from cancer. Sam is in a hospice facility where she expresses her frustration over dying in angry, expletive laden, poetry that serves as a way of pushing her nurse, Reuben (Alex Wolff), not to call on her during the support group. Reuben kicks the plot into gear by promising Sam that she can get pizza in New York City if she agrees to join the group trip to a show, somewhere in the City.

Turns out, Reuben has arranged for the patients to attend a puppet show. To say that Sam is not amused is an understatement. She leaves mid-show, along with her emotional support cat, Frodo, and goes to get candy at a nearby store. It is while Sam is in the store that an alien invasion begins. Monsters are burning down from the sky and attacking people, seemingly at random. As this happens, it slowly becomes clear that these aliens are attacking the loudest things around them.

Sam is nearly killed in an explosion only to wake up minutes later back inside the puppet theater. A few hours have passed and it's become clear, staying as quiet as possible can keep you alive. Sam soon reconnects with Reuben but that doesn't last long. Sam is still determined to go to her favorite pizza place in Harlem, a place of emotional meaning far beyond any desire for New York Style Pizza. Along the way, Sam's cat finds Eric (Joseph Quinn) who then attaches himself to Sam.

Eric is a mess of free roaming anxiety and panic attacks. That's not a criticism, I'd be the same way. Sam doesn't want him around but her kindness, and Eric's strange connection to Frodo, causes her to take pity on him and the two slowly forge a lovely, silent friendship. The two will keep each other alive all while trying to satisfy Sam's dying wish and get Eric to the port where authorities have determined that the monster aliens cannot swim. They are evacuating people to islands where the monsters can't get to them.

The friendship of Sam and Eric leads to a lovely scene where the two bond over Sam's pizza quest. Sam wanted to go to a specific place, one her father used to take her to after his gigs at a jazz club nearby. After finding the pizza place destroyed, Eric helps create a lovely moment for Sam at the Jazz club, creating one last great memory for her that includes a surprising dinner and a show that is genuinely sweet and moving. It's the kind of moment you don't expect from a movie with this many jump scares and relentless chase scenes.

It's a scene that makes me wish I liked this movie more. A Quiet Place: Day One is not a bad movie but I have I a few issues with the movie. For one thing, Eric and the cat is a strange story point. Eric is found by Frodo the cat and led to Sam by the cat. Eric risks his life to save the cat but some of the direction makes it appear that it's actually the cat is actually leading Eric around. The magical elements of how the cat behaves is not something I thought I would have to talk about going into the movie. It's weird and distracting.

There is also an element of predictability in A Quiet Place: Day One. It's a predictability born of one of the more interesting and unexpected character details in the film. Sam is dying from cancer. It's something you don't know about the character from the trailer or other marketing of the movie. This detail adds an unexpected pathos to the character. However, it also adds an element of predictability to the story. Because Sam is dying, the notion that she will sacrifice herself to save someone else becomes all too clear. It's just very obvious how this is going to play out and it takes away from the overall excitement of the movie.

A Quiet Place: Day One moves at a good pace, it looks good, the cinematography is crisp and clean. The basic elements of filmmaking are all in place. The film also benefits from a great performance by Lupita N'Yongo, an easily relatable and compelling hero. Unfortunately, the rest of the characters in A Quiet Place are not nearly as compelling. Joseph Quinn's character is compromised by the bizarre choice to connect him to the cat, Frodo, as if the two were linked psychically. It's a weird and distracting choice amid the genuine horror of the alien monster movie unfolding.

The movie also suffers from what all three of the A Quiet Place movies suffer from, exhaustion. The relentless chase scenes of the A Quiet Place movies leave you spent. As I said of A Quiet Place Pt 2, you don't watch the movie, you endure it. The alien attacks and the chase scenes are so relentless they become hopeless. It becomes impossible to believe anyone could actually survive in this universe and that people only survive because the screenplay determined that they should.

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