A Quiet Place: Day One

A young woman named Sam finds herself trapped in New York City during day one of the early stages of an invasion by alien creatures with ultra-sensitive hearing.

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Introduction

Aside from the plot itself, I enjoy prequels more, specially if the main film doesn’t delve too much into the history of the conflict. A prequel would definitely make me go “Ohh, so that’s why!”. Ranking a bit lower than the main title, “A Quiet Place: Day One” I’d say was underrated, though not as thrilling, it still was a gold entry for the franchise.

“A Quiet Place: Day One follows terminally ill cancer patient Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) and her service cat Frodo as they are unexpectedly caught in the initial alien invasion of New York City. With the sound-sensitive “Death Angels” attacking, Sam, along with a young lawyer named Eric (Joseph Quinn), tries to survive the ensuing chaos, navigating the city’s now silent ruins while also fulfilling Sam’s desire to visit a childhood pizza place. The film serves as a prequel, detailing the beginning of the apocalypse from a ground-level perspective.”

Characters

Lupita Nyong’o was great, her character was a bit annoying though but she played it beautifully. My favorite about her was how she displayed dread and fear, much like how she was in “Us”. That was probably my favorite among her works.

Joseph Quinn was phenomenal. First time I’ve seen of his work was on Stranger Things, I wasn’t aware of his filmography, but recently he’s been on fire (pun intended human torch)! Being on a number of blockbuster releases such as Fantastic Four First Steps and Gladiator 2.

Quinn was able to display his character’s vulnerability with his panic attacks and straight up just freezes up with fear. I love how intense his eyes get whenever the situation arises.

Lupita and Quinn is an unlikely duo and never would have thought they’d work if they collaborated, but man they sure proved me wrong. Their “unlikeliness” as a duo made the story more realistic and relatable. Props to the casting director.

I hope actually hoping for Djimon Hounsou to be more involved in the movie.

Purpose of the prequel

Like I said, getting to see how something came to be is very fulfilling for me, Day One scratches that itch, even if they explained it before, I want to see how they’re going to execute it—and execute they did.

They didn’t outright say where or how the creature got here, but throughout the whole film, you could see bits and pieces of how those creatures came here and how they operated. I actually like that they didn’t literally say what the creatures were, a little mystery adds more depth to the creatures.

Creature Design

It’s like a cross between Last Of Us’ creature, with the brain fungal-something and Jurassic Park’s Dilophosaurus but with all eardrums on the face.

There was one scene where Quinn’s character was stuck on a metal beam and we got a close-up look of the creature. When it opened its face, where the eyes should be, we could see an eardrum vibrating, listening to Quinn’s breathing and heartbeat.

The size of the creatures were intimidating as well, looks like Diaboromon from Digimon Adventures The Movie. Moves very fast and destroys anything that makes a sound.

What I didn’t like (Spoiler)

I know that the scene they had in the pub towards the third act was important, but all that time they were there, those creatures were roaming the streets, and about a block away from the pub, there are creatures lurking around. I think it didn’t make much sense that they were able to enjoy their time there peacefully.

When they was an announcement of a boat and we see crowds and crowds of people on the streets, it doesn’t seem realistic. After everything we’ve seen, and no one knows about the part of “quietness”, how is it that so many of them survived?

Conclusion

Day One is a great addition to the “A Quiet Place” franchise. It gave us a more detailed (yet we’re still in the dark) insight on where those creatures came from and how the world acted when they first came here. The pacing was a little bit messed up though, but it was still a nice watch.