The ubiquitous marketing campaign for A Quiet Place: Day One poses a problem for describing the movie, though not because it conceals or reveals any particular plot twists. Broadly speaking, on a strictly story level, the film is as advertised: Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) is in New York City, a bustling metropolis that would presumably be a competitor for the title of noisiest place on Earth, when the planet is invaded by those buggy, super-hearing monsters from the modern horror classic A Quiet Place—an event glimpsed in a small-town flashback during the modern horror, ah, movie A Quiet Place Part II—and must tiptoe her way through the insta-apocalypse. What’s been kept out of the ads for this prequel are some basic details about Nyong’o’s character, probably not even to preserve a sense of surprise so much as to stick to the franchise playbook of charismatic, potentially overqualified actors covering their own mouths in terrified effort to stop themselves from screaming as clicky monsters threaten to pounce.
Yet it’s still tempting to treat information that the movie imparts in its literal opening minutes as a potential spoiler. Those scene-setting details are both what makes A Quiet Place: Day One interesting to talk about, and also what could, by pure happenstance of overplayed trailers that elide them, create a genuine sense of discovery in audiences who may have missed that novelty from the competent, efficient, sequel-y Part II. Then again, getting too precious about these details might well overhype their importance to a movie that is essentially a well-wrought genre exercise with a surprisingly potent sense of character-driven intimacy at its center.
Let’s compromise, then, and stick to the capsule level for at least the remainder of this paragraph; thereafter, set-up will be revealed. Here’s the trailer-only gist: Despite those unavoidable Quiet Place hallmarks, and despite the cliché of importing an indie sensation (in this case Pig writer-director Michael Sarnoski), into a clearly templated franchise as an exercise in coloring within the lines, Day One is its own (clicky) creature, distinct from John Krasinski’s pair of family-centric stories while lining up with their openheartedness. It’s a New York disaster movie with genuine appreciation for the city streets that get so thoroughly trashed (even though it was shot in London).
This is all the more impressive given what A Quiet Place: Day One threatens to become, which is a thriller where a numbed woman is frightened into reclaiming her will to live. Elements of this hoary trope nudge the narrative because Sam, we learn very early on, is living outside of the city at a hospice care facility, where she theoretically has only months left due to an unspecified terminal illness. She appears to lack immediate family and friends; she’s in Manhattan for a facility day-trip, and even post-disaster, she doesn’t seem to have anyone whose well-being plagues her thoughts, apart from the emotional support cat she improbably but delightfully totes with her everywhere. In the aftermath of the initial attack, Sam does not share her fellow citizens’ drive to reach the boats that are supposedly coming to rescue them, as illustrated in an evocative (and very New York-y) shot of Nyong’o as the sole person pushing through a panicked throng in the opposite direction of traffic.
Some viewers may think, however briefly, of Melancholia, in which only a clinically depressed woman was truly prepared for the looming end of the world. Sarnoski doesn’t go that far into apocalyptic metaphor, though the city does get coated in some 9/11-style dust. (Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds paid scarier, more immediately chilling homage to a generation’s real-life disaster movie.) Instead, Sam simply pursues a goal different from most of the fleeing wannabe survivors—one that could have been material for an absurdist (and potentially deathly cutesy) indie comedy, but that Sarnoski imbues with low-key but foodie-adjacent passion.
Eventually, Sam links up with Eric (Joseph Quinn), an Englishmen who appears equally alone in the city, and also suffers from some unspecified ailment, whether that’s panic attacks, broader anxiety, or just the normal reaction to marauding aliens that fatally body-slam (or consume? It’s easy to forget) any human they can hear. Less crucially, she also intersects with Henri (Djimon Hounsou), who lives to see A Quiet Place Part II. There are pauses for some suspenseful set pieces—who knew such a literal-minded instance of Save the Cat could feel so relatively organic?—and one sequence that sort of slips away from Sarnoski as he embraces a what’s-happening-now chaos that’s experientially realistic and also a brief chore to parse on screen. Speaking of chores: Insufferably finicky New Yorkers like this critic will also note that the movie yada-yadas a whole lot of city blocks to get from its starting point to Sam’s intended destination. Still, the movie delivers some Cloverfield-y ground-level views of monster-movie mayhem, and without the yammering from behind a shaky camera.
It’s the lack of yammering that represents Sarnoski’s real achievement in A Quiet Place: Day One—his way with, well, quiet. Krasinski’s movies had this too, of course, but the silent shorthand between family members can be worlds away from the tentative communication between two strangers struggling with the realization of how alone they are. Nyong’o, a prestige actress who moonlights as the world’s most expressive scream queen, does wonders with the nuances of Sam’s sorrow, the tug of war between acceptance and fighting for her life. Sarnoski’s camera lingers on some haunting imagery, like a pair of children who have cleverly and desperately stationed themselves in the middle of a small fountain to use the still-running water as temporary cover; he seems genuinely curious about what this kind of alien attack would look like, moreso than concerned with wringing every possible second of white-knuckle terror from it. He’s supplied some material for a major ad blitz, and still saved some Quiet for himself.