Arriving before the original trilogy has wrapped up, A Quiet Place: Day One focuses on the early moments of an alien invasion and brings new life to the franchise as a result.
Stepping away from the trouble magnets known as the Abbott family, A Quiet Place: Day One takes place in New York City on the first day of a familiar invasion. It follows Sam (Lupita Nyong’o), a young woman with cancer living out her last days in a hospice.
When her group takes a trip into the city for a show, she gets caught in the first stages of an extraterrestrial attack. As chaos and panic overthrows New York, she attempts to keep herself, her cat Frodo, and a newfound shadow Eric (Joseph Quinn) alive by making as little noise as possible.
On paper, Day One is a gamble. A Quiet Place made a roaring impact when it arrived in 2018, with a less impressive sequel following in 2020. A Quiet Place 3 is still heading our way, set to round out the trilogy. By all accounts, Day One is a side project, an interruption. So why is it good?
A city under attack
“The volume of New York City is 90 decibels. That’s the volume of a constant scream.” This is what the opening of A Quiet Place: Day One tells us. What follows is a tortuous game of cat and mouse between monstrous aliens with superhearing and the residents of a city that never stops making noise.
A Quiet Place Part II teased the initial invasion in an action-packed and clever sequence – one which Day One manages to make look like a outing at the ballpark.
The first hits of alien invaders bring this closer to a disaster flick than anything else, and until the actual creatures make themselves known, you’d be forgiven for mistaking this as a throwback piece to those early 2000s horror movies born from a post-9/11 world. (Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later would both make great companion movies to Day One.)
Indeed, that brand of terrorism-fearing horror seeps into the first half of Day One. Dust-covered figures run around screaming, blood paints overturned cars, and unabashed confusion dominates before we’ve seen even a single monster.
It’s a set-up that continues to ripple throughout the rest of the film, earning the tension it creates and making the non-alien moments positively frightful to be caught in.
Two scream queens and one cat
The smartest thing Day One ever did (and, frankly, any movie ever) was cast Lupita Nyong’o. There’s not one second spent with her that’s wasted. She already proved her horror chops in Jordan Peele’s Us, and Day One only further cements her status as a potential genre legend in the making.
Yes, A Quiet Places’ signature aliens are scary – like Stranger Things’ Demogorgons on crack and with really great hearing – but it’s Nyong’o’s expressions that really lock in those shivers.
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Her huge reddened eyes are perma-wide, and really the only thing you can look at. Her face is always a picture of crippling horror, always wanting to scream but never able to.
Joseph Quinn is the ideal screen partner, equally rattled by fear and far more open about it. Although they’re two strangers on the street brought together under circumstance, their chemistry feels the complete opposite. It’s as though they were meant to share the story together, never clashing and always making room for the other’s performance.
But no performance is as impressive as the double act of Nico and Schnitzel, the two cats who jointly play Sam’s pet, Frodo. A lesser film would allow the cat to become a thing of annoyance and would have audiences wishing it would be gobbled up, but it’s impossible not to love him.
A Quiet Place: Day One verdict — 4/5
Day One would be easy to write off. After all, why should anyone care? We’ve seen these particular monsters twice now, and the “keep quiet” gimmick might already be old to some.
But in a year of excellent horror, it’s well worth making time for this. No, the aliens aren’t doing anything new, but they’re almost the scariest they’ve been in how close they get and how loud they are, running through New York like a freight train that shakes the theater walls.
No, it doesn’t have notable involvement of anyone from the original series (John Krasinski gets his name in with a “story by” co-credit, while Pig mastermind Michael Sarnoski handles the directing and screenplay), but there’s clever, unpatronizing storytelling going on here that makes it feel like a completely new venture.
Frankly, it’s one of the most exciting movies to watch on the big screen this year. When a movie makes your heart pound and locks in your attention this much, it doesn’t deserve to be underestimated in the slightest.
A Quiet Place: Day One should be seen, and more importantly, it should be seen in theaters. While there’s genuine fright and intensity to be found on the screen, the real magic comes from when you step outside again into the incredibly busy and horribly loud streets.
A Quiet Place: Day One arrives in theaters on June 28, 2024. For more, check out all the other new movies to watch this month. You can also read our feature on why A Quiet Place’s most horrific scene proves people don’t know how to watch movies, or check out our guide to A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead.