A Quiet Place: Day One follows Sam, a woman who goes to New York to see a play and, while trying to return to where she was staying, witnesses Earth being invaded by murderous aliens with super-hearing, causing the city that always screamed to fall into complete silence overnight. The film, directed by Michael Sarnoski, is extremely refreshing for the new breath of air it brings to the “A Quiet Place” franchise, captivating the viewer as much as the previous two films did. The film has everything you can expect from a movie in this universe, especially the tension, which ensures that no living character is safe in the next sequence, and the agonizing scenes when someone makes the slightest noise. The audio design is done spectacularly, shining in the scenes of absolute silence, where anything that happens you will hear, and anything you hear will make you anxious in your seat for the characters in the chase scenes.
Regarding the differences, it was indeed a shrewd decision to bring this part to an extremely noisy place. The contrast that occurs when Sam wakes up after a period of unconsciousness and sees all the chaos of New York transform into a quiet and agonized city is surprisingly cool to see, and it made me wonder how they would work from there, since unlike its predecessors, no one knows sign language (at least no one who interacted with Sam), and it’s a much more crowded place than the other, with many possibilities to follow. Sam, played by Lupita Nyong’o, has a very well-crafted story, as she is a character with terminal cancer. The film plays a lot with this fact and makes you have a very strong sympathy for her, seeing her conflict to survive, sometimes more to save her own cat than herself. Her relapse and even the reading of a poem about the disease she did are parts that will really move you and make you root for her, even though her end has been decided from the first minute of the film. Lupita delivers a lot with her performance, and every time she has the opportunity to shine on screen, she does.
The characters here are practically non-existent beyond our protagonist and her new friend on the journey, Eric, who in my view was a low point of this film. Besides the two, the only one who was minimally explored is the nurse who takes care of Sam, played by Alex Wolff, who was just a tool to introduce her to us in the first act of the film, and the worst part was that his small participation was already better than everything Joseph Quinn did here. Speaking of him, Eric, played by the actor, is the kind of person you call a “Golden Retriever,” since his only function was to follow Sam for no reason other than being scared and wanting company, which is not very smart since she was going in the opposite direction of the evacuation happening in the metropolis. He is introduced around the second act, and he really managed to considerably worsen the film, and not because of the actor, who delivers a good performance, but the way he acts like a scared dog that needs comforting was irritating at a certain point. It’s not unbearable, but he really makes decisions throughout the film that are questionable, to say the least.
And I also have to say about the government’s evacuation plan, which was to arrive with a helicopter over Manhattan, telling all the thousands of survivors to go to the south of the island. I still think about how they thought sending several desperate people to one place would be a good idea, and it’s something you see going wrong as soon as you see the crowd going to the port. Any decision could have been made, and they managed to choose the worst one to take and kill even more of the population that was already largely dead. The film may have used this sequence just to be another of the desperate parts where there is a chase, but it was done so clumsily that it wasn’t so good.
But returning to talk about the qualities, a new thing about the film was the change of directors, where John Krasinski gave way to Michael Sarnoski, director of Pig, to direct the film, and what a hit it was. Michael manages to work spectacularly the desperate scenes that happen, and in my view, he does an even better job than the previous one in this case. He works very well when the scenes have a factor of chaos, such as when meteors fall all over the city. Sam’s confusion makes us as confused as she is, with dust everywhere and the murderous aliens destroying everything they see, Sarnoski does an incredible job with these debris on the screen, and this is just a part of this film, but you can expect this kind of thing throughout the film.
The relationship between Eric and Sam here is really that of a stray puppy that follows you in the street after you give it a pat. Eric has no reason to follow Sam, but he goes after her anyway, and the two build a good friendship for the third act of the film. This third act has scenes that deviate a bit from all the adrenaline that this film provides, with a moment of calm for the two that left me a little emotional in the cinema because of the whole context of that scene. It’s something refreshing, since after everything that happens during the film, the last thing you would expect is a scene as cute and beautiful as that one, and here everything was good, both direction, soundtrack, construction of the scene, and the performance of the two stars.
In the end, A Quiet Place: Day One will not stray much from what you can already expect from the film, but the changes that occur are extremely welcome. With much affliction, both from the extraterrestrials destroying the entire city or with some dumb decisions of the script at times, this film will entertain you, scare you, and move you during its duration.
A Quiet Place: Day One releases in theaters on June 28.
