A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) - A shaky but enjoyable third instalment to John Krasinski’s Quiet franchise
Credit: allocine.fr
From (half) the mind of original director John Krasinski comes the genesis of the quiet world as we know it, a strangely paced, rather plotless instalment directed by Michael Sarnoski that in some ways still manages to hold up the Quiet triptych – albeit on a very shaky leg indeed – but that in others completely lacks the suspense that made the first two so excellent.
Lupita Nyong’o is Samira, or “Sam”, a terminally ill cancer patient living in a hospice just outside of New York with her cat Frodo. Dragged out to the city centre to see a marionette show by her kindly nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff), Sam finds herself caught in the middle of an apocalypse as the signature extraterrestrials, short of sight but exceptional of hearing, descend upon town. Though – understandably – alarmed at first, Sam’s only real quest becomes not to survive but to track down the last slice of pizza from an old restaurant she used to frequent with her father. It’s a somewhat original premise – for once, a protagonist’s desire to stay alive is quashed by her unavoidable terminal illness. However, when she runs into English law student Eric (Joseph Quinn), who seems quite eager to keep breathing, her plans for Italian goodness are foiled.
Once again brilliantly shot (this time by Pat Scola) and loyal to the originals’ havoc, A Quiet Place: Day One pays homage to apocalyptic nightmares such as World War Z with its dark corridors and Cloverfield with a shaky cam feel and a rather nail-biting passage in a subway tunnel. Part of what makes the Quiet series so unique is its confidence in simply being quiet amidst the apparent breakdown of society – in this case, it is Sam’s illness, weakening her each day, and her desire to rejoin a simpler past, in which she listened to her father play jazz in a wooden-floored bar, that takes centre stage, creating a rather beautiful harmony between herself and Eric, whose vulnerability and waywardness are a perfect foil to Sam’s pessimism. Certainly no dull moment passes, but much is inevitably lost in an essentially non-existent plot, scene after scene, in which the incoming threat of the creatures garners a finger to the mouth, pieced together until the suspense deflates of its own accord. A Quiet Place: Day One’s true blunder, however, is mistaking a cat for a plot device – a “vulnerable” character, such as an animal or child, can certainly be used once or twice as a way for the protagonist to voluntarily get in the way of danger, but making it a regular occurrence is where Sarnoski’s spin-off loses its way.