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Between the release of A Quiet Place in 2018 and A Quiet Place 2 in 2021, something odd happened: The world almost ended.
Is that hyperbole? Think back exactly four years, when we were inundated with images of death and violence, when we couldn't conceive of a future that hadn't changed in incalculable ways. Now we're in that future, and maybe it hasn't changed all that much, but we have.
That creates an interesting sort of problem for movies about the apocalypse. When we've seen what the world looks like when it's at the brink, it's hard to let go of disbelief, and in a movie like A Quiet Place: Day One that's even more critical than the movies that have come before.
Where, for instance, are the naysayers? Even when faced with certain annihilation, what we know now is that there would be a faction or two hundred that insists the whole thing is a government conspiracy. When told to literally be quiet, there are an awful lot of people who would insist they have every right to be noisy.
On the subject of noise, A Quiet Place: Day One opens with a title card that lets us know that New York City constantly emits sounds that are as loud as a human scream. What we know from the previous Quiet Place films is that the alien invaders are intolerant of loud sounds. Which begs the question: Why would they choose New York? Couldn't they hear the high-pitched squeal of subway brakes? Wouldn't that kill them all upon landing?
Alas, A Quiet Place: Day One offers 90 minutes to ponder such questions even while it delivers a story that is reasonably tense and astonishingly well acted by its three central performers: Lupita Nyong'o, as a poet dying of cancer who ends up fighting for her life in a different way; Joseph Quinn as a law student with a remarkably resilient wash-and-wear suit and tie; and Schnitzel and Nico, who play a cat named Frodo who steals every scene in which he appears (which is most of them).
The movie offers a motivation beyond the obvious for Nyong'o's character, Sam, to try to make her way north out of midtown. It seems like a flimsy sort of excuse to flirt with extreme danger and almost certain death, and when she's joined by Quinn's Eric the willingness of the two to make the journey is yet another one of those head-scratching moments. And yet, it ends up offering a strong and effective catharsis, and a rarity in a horror film: a scene of touching, tender humanity. That scene between the three main characters makes most of the rest of the experience worth it—but can't negate how strange the whole experience is.
Since this is a prequel, we already know most of the outcome, we know what becomes of the monsters, so we're left asking endless questions based on all the information we already have. I couldn't help but wonder about all the plot holes, all the rules of how the monsters behave that are seemingly violated in A Quiet Place: Day One. But then the movie came back to Nyong'o, Quinn and the cat—especially the cat— and that turns out to be, just barely, enough.
The apocalypse won't look like this, but hopefully the cats will cooperate.
Viewed July 4, 2024 — AMC Universal 16
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