Despite enjoying both A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place: Part II, they are one of those type of films whose execution never quite lived up to the wonderful idea, with it feeling to me like something was missing. I admit that my favourite part of the second film was the prologue that showed how the protagonists experienced the terrible day the aliens invaded. This part was so exciting and action packed that it felt like it was a test bed for this new film. As the title suggests, the Michael Sarnoski directed A Quiet Place: Day One takes the idea of showing the initial invasion and runs with it. Set in New York, I have to say I expected an action packed thrill ride in the vein of Cloverfield, instead this was something altogether more wondrous. If I had been asked before hand what the one word I would likely use to describe the movie, I very much doubt it would have been the word it turned out to be for me - beautiful.
Sam (Lupita Nyong'o - Black Panther) is a terminally ill woman living out her last days in a hospice. Her nurse (Alex Wolff - Hereditary) convinces her to come along on a coach trip to her previous home, New York to visit a theatre, something she only agrees to on the promise that they get pizza on the way home. Life had other plans though as she ends up getting caught up in disastrous events when lethal alien monsters who hunt by sound invade New York. Her and the other survivors soon learn that to make any type of noise whatsoever is to invite death at the hands of the deadly creatures. They also learn that the aliens are unable to swim, and so a planned evacuation of the city by boats has been announced. Sam decides rather than try to escape the city, she instead plans to head across city and get pizza at a place in Harlem that has a lot of sentimental value to her. Along the way she encounters Eric (Joseph Quinn - Stranger Things TV show), a timid and scared English man with no friends or family in America who is desperate for direction. She eventually agrees to let the man travel with her, and together they form an unlikely and beautiful friendship.
So my synopsis only mentioned the two protagonists but there is actually a third one in the unexpected form of a cat, which Sam takes with her everywhere as an emotional support animal. The cat is weirdly as integral a part of the group as the other two, even if it is sometimes used as an excuse for the characters to get in deeper peril. It barely makes a single noise the whole film, that did seem to me to be a bit strange, what with the monsters everywhere, I explained that away in my head that the cat was for some reason a mute one. Until Eric emerged out of a flooded subway tunnel in his emergence into the movie I had no idea it was the actor who played the beloved Eddie character in Stranger Things (even then it was only after my best friend I saw the film with pointed it out). There must be something about the actor that is endearing, as I came to love him just as much as I did Eddie. There is a vulnerability to the character here that made it hard to dislike him, helped by the moments of humour that occur with him and Sam. When he first shows up and starts following her at a small distance, it was funny the way she kept silently trying to shoo him away as one example. The character might be meek and mild but he is no coward, the two form a great bond with them perfectly complimenting each other. It is fair to say he is mainly a supporting character to Sam, with the film being all about her, Eric's past mainly left a blank slate. Being long past the time frame she was given to live, Sam is weak and in constant pain. This leads to Eric looking after her, getting medication for her, and helping her traverse the ruined city. In turn Sam helps him get through his frequent panic attacks and keeps him grounded. It would have been so easy to have a late plot point of Eric turning into a selfish coward and abandoning Sam, instead they have a believable and heartfelt friendship that was not something I had thought I would see in a film like this.
The film is paced very well. There are moments of action and mayhem for sure, but a lot of the film is carried out in silence save for the musical score. Aside from the prologue sequence, the pair are able to have conversations, such as during a thunderstorm, or when they are by noisy objects, but for the most part they communicate in silence. Rather than the static nature of the first film, the pair here are constantly on the move, and it felt novel that rather than a typical 'escape the city' storyline, they instead are on a far more personal quest, that takes Sam back to her childhood, where she can get final closure on her life. The alien creatures looked as freaky and lethal as always, the resemblance to the Demogorgon from Stranger Things even more apparent now that one of the cast members of that show is around them. Sound design was excellent here, with sound as integral a part as the previous films, but here amplified even more by being in a once loud and bustling New York now silent. It speaks to the emotional beauty of the film that my favourite scene was one late into the one hour forty minute movie, in a place removed from the outside horror. Here, Sam and Eric really sharing a real moment together in a place very important to her and which perfectly summed up the vibe and feel of Day One as a whole.
The only issues I had with the film were slight, it sometimes felt like the cat was used as a way for the pair to have to get into danger, and there was one side character (who later appears in A Quiet Place: Part II) who kept turning up randomly throughout the film. I thought he was a good character, it just felt a bit unrealistic that in a city the size of New York he would keep popping up in the places he did.
This even manages to end on a perfect note, with both characters (and the cat) all getting fantastic endings to their storylines, I can't think of how the ending could have been improved upon. A Quiet Place: Day One feels like the culmination of the idea first explored in the original movie. The idea felt refined and built upon, with its display here being where everything came together perfectly. I came in expecting balls to the wall action and left with my best friend in tears and us both blown away with just how emotional and special this wonderous movie was.
SCORE:
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