Rating 5/10
A Quiet Place: Day One is the third installment in the franchise, offering the perspective of a prequel by exploring the initial invasion of Earth by deadly aliens. Set in the chaotic early days of the attack, the account aims to expand the universe established by its predecessors but ultimately fails to provide fresh insights or elevate the stakes of its familiar narrative.
Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) is a cancer patient near the end of life. She lives at a hospice in New York City with her cat, Frodo. One day, Reuben (Alex Wolff), the care worker there, persuades Sam to join a group outing to Manhattan. While there, they witness meteor-like objects crashing into the borough, followed by an onslaught of hostile extraterrestrials. In the ensuing confusion, she learns she must remain silent to evade detection by the creatures. As the metropolis descends into chaos, Sam and another survivor, Eric (Joseph Quinn), endeavor to reach an evacuation point. Our duo do their best to steer clear of aliens as they soldier on.
A Quiet Place: Day One is a derivative experience, focusing yet again on people trying to remain silent to avoid organisms that Cillian Murphy’s character called “Death Angels” in Part II. Since this is a prequel, the way people discovered how these beasts respond to sound would be an interesting idea to explore. Yeah, but nope. Everyone already knows the creatures’ weakness is sound right from the get-go. Helicopters broadcast these survival techniques from loudspeakers at the beginning. How the pilots learned this knowledge is never explained.
The Quiet Place series’ attempt at a psychological portrait has always been tricky because there is scarcely any dialogue. Fans of the second film will recognize that actor Djimon Hounsou is back. In that saga, he portrayed the leader of a group of survivors living on an island, keeping safe from the creatures who cannot swim. However, Henri (he gets a name in this installment) is not the focus of this story. What could have been a way to tie this plot to the previous ones becomes a missed opportunity.
While the addition of Sam, a terminally ill cancer patient, adds a layer of poignancy to the narrative, the fact she is going to die soon anyway means there are no stakes. Her prickly personality makes it even more difficult to care what happens to her. Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave) is an Oscar-winning actress, but the filmmakers don’t utilize her talents with any depth. As dreary an individual as Sam is, Eric is even more of a blank slate. There are moments of humanity as Eric tries to help fulfill Sam’s dying wish to get a slice from her favorite pizza joint. Sure a good flatbread is more pressing than your own survival, but it hardly forms the basis for an entire movie.
06-27-24