A Quiet Place: Day One

A Quiet Place: Day One

Director ~ Michael Sarnoski

Writers ~ Michael Sarnoski, John Krasinski, Bryan Woods

2024, US-UK

Stars ~ Lupita Nyong'o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff

Decent enough and executed well, but a sequel that doesn’t follow the magic ingredient of the originals: prolonged set pieces with monsters. Rather, we get a downbeat narrative led by Deathwish Pizza and anxiety more for a cat than the characters. Came for the monsters and set pieces, but Sarnoski offers a different beast, and that’s commendable enough except it doesn’t seem to realise that all the prior plot holes were forgiven by those set pieces. Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn are strong leads, making it work; the former bringing sadness and dignity to her fatalism and the latter especially bringing an authentic portrayal of a man guided by fear and general decency rather than machismo.

As our investment is in a lead character that is terminally ill, our concern isn’t if but when and how. It becomes not so much about survival, but rather her obstinacy to get a pizza slice across town to recreate happier memories before checking out: it all hinges on whether she gets there. Her fatalism makes her contrarian, and yet she still struggles to stay alive for her pizza moment. Justin Clark writes that it morphs into “a bittersweet tale of what it’s like to genuinely and fully live with a death sentence.” But there’s no evidence of “fully living” when the character is simply surviving an apocalypse, surely. So then it becomes about choosing your moment to die, but this doesn’t quite fit with a monster movie scenario. Or rather, this isn’t the film to unearth a new angle on the subgenre with that mandate. It mostly retreats into movie sentimentality. The alien invasion becomes a manifestation of a fear of death at any moment, or wanting to see the world burn when the terminal illness leaves you with only sadness and anger.

I may go along with the pizza motivation, but I myself am not convinced by the cat: survives near-drowning twice; turns up when narratively convenient, sometimes just disappears; seems atypically unskittish; and I am certain the anarchic, random and wilfully selfish behaviour that cats are known for would have gotten someone, if not everyone, killed. (Indeed, we’ve seen Eric trying to silently, painfully remove a package from a display and that’s the moment that the cat chooses to do its feline jump scare with a loud thud that has no consequences, even though just the ripping of clothing has been shown to summon the aliens). It seems resolutely unbothered by the presence of giant aliens which it would surely catapult away from or rub against, depending upon its mood. Maybe service cats are different. Maybe service cats don’t meow or make noise. Whatever, that is where any cat lover’s anxiety will be.

And if you came for answers to the aliens, or any illumination on their invasion or day one, there isn’t that either. Like the ‘Planet of the Apes’ franchise, ‘A Quiet Place’ has taken a turn for the miserabilism, meaning this is a little low on the fun and thrills to balance the fear and despair.