A Quiet Place: Day One
Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski
Starring Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Djimon Hounsou
Rated PG-13
Runtime: 1 hour, 40 minutes
In theaters June 28

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

A disclosure up front: I have not seen the previous two entries in the A Quiet Place franchise. I meant to see the first one, never got around to it, and missed the second due to the pandemic, and then never prioritized them for home viewing. You can’t see everything, and there wasn’t much in the premise that intrigued me. Truly, before the ubiquity of the trailer for this prequel, I didn’t even know this series was a creature feature. But the casting of Lupita Nyong’o and the pitch for this as a disaster/monster movie mashup intrigued me. That interest completely paid off, as A Quiet Place: Day One offers a surprising amount of depth underneath its thrills.

Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) is a terminally ill cancer patient in a hospice facility outside New York City. She tags along with some of the other patients for a show in the city, bringing Frodo, her cat and constant companion with her. While there, meteors crash into the city, and soon the survivors of the initial attack realize that the unfamiliar creatures hunt via sound. Eventually, Frodo meets Eric (Joseph Quinn), a British expat, and they begin to work together to navigate the ruins of Manhattan.

While I am sure there may be aspects of this film that may feel overly familiar to those who sang the praises of the first two installments, I found the prequel approach here somewhat refreshing. A Quiet Place: Day One does not attempt to explain much about these creatures, other than they fell from the sky like meteors, hunt via sound (or just really hate noise of any kind, either is fine by me), and can’t swim. Other than the response by the military to isolate Manhattan by blowing up the bridges (and the subsequent plan to evacuate by boat), we see very little of the big picture of this invasion, keeping us on Sam’s level the entire runtime. Seeing these characters scramble over city rubble and trying to move stealthily reminded me of some of my favorite parts of Half-Life 2, where traversing the environment to slip past enemies is often more thrilling than dealing with them head on. These elements enhance the disaster/horror mashup premise of this film, as well as make for some tense and suspenseful sequences.

But it is outside those sequences where the film reveals its depths. Because its main character is a hospice patient, it centers a disabled person at the center of its narrative. While her fears about survival are not expressly articulated, it is clear from her reactions to the events of the movie that she does not see salvation coming for her via boat. How would a resource-strapped band of survivors decide to care for a terminal patient? How would other disabled people be treated in this situation? During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, disability discrimination was everywhere, and mentally disabled people were more likely to die from the virus than others. While living in silence due to constant violent threat is not a happy prospect for Sam, she innately recognizes that she has little to look forward to even after rescue, where her fate will be decided by leaders trying to manage resources and ‘save the savable.’ Despite the creature’s presence, she is willing to adapt to this world as long as it means preserving her freedom.

This is emphasized in her journey throughout the film. Lured to the city by the prospect of good pizza, she continues her quest to visit her favorite shop in Harlem rather than head to evacuation at the South Street Seaport. She and Eric make their way to her home, and then to the jazz club where her father played piano. Through her connection with Eric (deftly facilitated by Frodo), she reconnects to her old life. For most, that would mean life before the creatures, but for her, it is life before disability. These scenes add so much to A Quiet Place: Day One because it is a film about mourning the way life used to be. While never invoking the pandemic (the series’ timeline would not allow it anyway), the film manages to be one of the most heartfelt and nuanced explorations on living through it.