A Quiet Place Day One
A Quiet Place Day One, the third installment in the Quiet Place franchise, returns to the original event of the aliens arriving to earth. The first two films revolve around the Abbott family, and the opener of the second film actually shows how that family reacted to the first day of the event. However, those films are set in the rural upstate New York. A Quiet Place Day One takes place in New York City, even noting at the beginning that the decibel meter of the city on average is the sound of a scream.
A film where the premise appears almost unnecessary to its audience, I really dug what this film was trying to do. John Krasinksi, who has been involved in the series since the beginning as a writer and director, stated that the original film was really a metaphor about parenting. If the first two films around this family are metaphors for raising children and sending them off into a world that is more daunting and terrifying than they might realize, this film seems to have a metaphor around the idea of death itself.
Lupita Nyong'o plays the main lead of this film, matched only by her cat Frodo, with shared screentime with Joseph Quinn and Alex Wolff. Nyong’o’s character is in hospice care, coming into the city to watch a marionet show when the aliens attack. In a very tight 99 minutes, Nyong’o’s character comes to term with her past in the city, and her future as a terminally ill patient through the help of Quinn and Wolff’s characters. The entire cast has to do a remarkable amount of facial acting, considering speaking is not accessible to them under the current situations, and they all soar at it. The bond made between Quinn, Nyong’o and her cat really solidifies them as almost a family unit against this impending apocalypse as they attempt to find safety in the city, and if there are any remaining pizza slices at Patsy’s in Harlem.
The action in the film is incredibly well done. The added thrill of being concerned over the pair’s feline companion adds an extra level to every nail biting sequence even if it doesn’t always seem very realistic. Ultimately, while the film ends a little heavy on the sentimental note, it works for me. It’s an incredibly tightly written action thriller, with characters that are likeable and interesting, and a thematic note that ties the series together.