One of the most unique premises in sci-fi/horror in recent years has been that of the A Quiet Place series which told of a world where humanity has been nearly made extinct by alien monsters which hunt by sound, forcing humans to live in silence or die. The 2018 original A Quiet Place, co-written and directed by John Krasinski, was a brilliant exploration of the premise due to one child being deaf (and thus unable to know if she's making noise) and another is an infant who can't control when it cries.
2021's A Quiet Place Part Two was less successful as it was bogged down by the premise that at the end of the world there will still be selfish bandits preying on others as if they have any way to use the loot. But its opening sequence showing the alien invasion from the family's point of view in their rural town was harrowing and provides the impetus for what's depicted in A Quiet Place: Day One, which shows what happened in Manhattan.
Lupita Nyong'o stars as Sam, a terminal cancer patient at a hospice outside NYC. She's a bit of a misanthrope, trashing her fellow residents in a poem she reads in group therapy. She reluctantly agrees to go on a day trip to the city in hopes of getting some pizza and annoyed that it turns out to be a marionette show. She ducks out to get a snack at a bodega and when she returns she learns the group is heading back to the hospice due to some unspecified emergency which we rapidly learn is an alien invasion as meteors carrying the monsters pummel Manhattan.
Trapped in the island due to all the bridges being blown up by the military - considering they landed everywhere as shown in the other films, what's the point - Sam decides to not head for the seaport where evacuations are being conducted, but to head north for Harlem to get pizza from a specific place.
Along the way she's joined by Eric (Joseph Quinn, Eddie Munson from the 4th season of Stranger Things), an English law student who's shellshocked by what's going on. She doesn't want the company, but lets him tag along with her and her cat Frodo as they dodge aliens in various harrowing encounters.
A Quiet Place: Day One is a larger scale rendition of the events depicted in the 2nd film, but isn't overly bloated with action sequences, portraying the mayhem more impressionisticly as aliens attack at the edges of the frame, out of focus. Writer-director Michael Samoski - whose last film was the terrific rediscovery that Nicolas Cage could still act, Pig - who collaborated with Krasinski on the story ably manages the scares and pathos of the story, staging some nail-biting close calls as well as charming moments of caring in a world at its end.
But undercutting the story is the same flaw that harmed Kate, the forgotten 2021 Netflix Original starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead as an assassin dying of radiation poisoning, in that what are the stakes for a character who is a dead woman walking? The original movie was about a father trying to protect his family, Day One is about a surly dying woman with no apparently family or friends living for what exactly? Same with Eric, what's he about? Since conversation is lethal, there is little time for Basil Exposition chit-chat and thus who are we rooting for other than Frodo, the chillest cat in the world who doesn't ever hiss or freak out as monsters are inches away. (This is due to the makers not wanting to use CGI or frighten the two cats, Nico and Schnitzel, to get a reaction because they couldn't be trained to do those actions.)
That we're not actively rooting for Sam's death is a testament to Nyong'o's performance as she gradually paints Sam as a woman resigned to her fate, but not rushing towards it, if only to protect Frodo. The ending is predictable, but how else could it have wrapped up. Quinn is good, but has little to play. Also making a brief, but impactful cameo is Djimon Hounsou who I forgot until prepping this review was in the 2nd film, so he's playing the same role.
I'm not sure how many more Quiet Place movies they can or should make despite their being a profitable series thanks to keeping the budgets low because how many ways can you do "Shhhhh, don't make a sound" tension. It's a unique premise, but sometimes you can only take them so far.
The 4K Dolby Vision presentation is good, if muted due to the gray, post-9/11 inspired color palette. Colors, where they appear, are rich. Where the party really starts is with the Dolby Atmos audio. The series has always had really smart sound design, using height channels to great effect as in the first film's scene where a racoon is on the roof and you hear it scurrying around. Here helicopters whir overhead, aliens gallop with meaty thuds and even though you will have to turn up the volume to hear the whispered dialog, when the booms occur, they don't rattle your eardrums.
Score: 6.5/10. Catch it on cable.
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