When New York City comes under attack from an alien invasion, a woman and other survivors try to find a way to safety. They soon learn that they must remain absolutely silent as the mysterious creatures are drawn to the slightest sound.
A Quiet Place: Day One is directed by Michael Sarnoski who previously directed Pig (2021). A Quiet Place: Day One is the third installment to the Quiet Place series and serves as a spin-off and prequel to the first film.
The first two Quite Places films are quite excellent, some of my favorite modern horror films that I'm glad to see get a lot of love. When I heard Michael Sarnoski's next film after Pig (2021) a film in which is one of my favorite films of the 2020s so far was going to be a new Quiet Place film I was very intrigued where he was going to take the series. Sarnoski definitely took the franchise in a much different direction that's for sure, a direction that some fans may not like but I absolutely loved for sure.
To start out with the performances are fantastic, Lupita Nyong'o once again shows that she is one of the best actresses working today, a lot of this film really relies on her and Joseph Quinn (who I will get to in a second) and they both absolutely nail it. Nyong'o's character Samira is a terminally ill cancer patient who is slowly but surely dying, she absolutely feels this and seems to just sort of accept that she's dying. However there's a lot of nuance to the performance especially in later scenes as we get to know Samira as a character that leads to some of the most beautiful moments in this series so far.
Nyong'o just interacting with the rest of the cast is captivating she brings so much emotion to this series and perfectly captures the atmosphere around her, there's one scene in particular during the last half of the film that brought me to tears, it's a moment that I strongly believe is the best scene of the series so far. Between the build up to the scene, the direction and the performances from Nyong'o and Quinn it's truly beautiful that truly made me cry.
Joseph Quinn is the other half of this film, his character Eric sort of just decides to join Samira and honestly that's a pretty real depiction if an alien invasion actually happened, right from the start the viewer can tell Eric has a ton of anxiety and is alone, he's in shock, has tons of anxiety and does not want to go back to being alone. Eric's introduction is some of the best character introduction I've seen in a film so far this year and just seeing Eric and Samira interact with one another, talking about their backstories is just truly beautiful. Combined together Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn give powerhouse performances that end up being some of the very best so far this year.
A performance I was not expecting to be this good was Frodo the cat who is actually played by two different cats Nico and Schnitzel. Frodo actually plays quite a lot of important parts to the story and I'm not exactly sure how they are able to get a cat to jump around, or climb that perfectly but it's truly fascinating how great Nico and Schnitzel are. Frodo is Samira's cat and throughout the film he's a lookout for any danger and does quite a good job of doing so.
As I've hinted at from talking about the performances, Michael Sarnoski focuses much more on the human elements of the series rather than the monsters, sure there are some action and chase scenes that are still very effective. But that's not the main focus here, much like when Pig (2021) was about Nicolas Cage and the people he interacts with. A Quiet Place: Day One is very similar only less characters, heck there's this theme of life and death throughout the film. Samira wants to do one last thing before she dies, as she goes on this journey with Eric she tells the viewer a bit about her life every so often until we are eventually given that scene I mentioned earlier that made me cry (which I won't spoil). Sarnoski does such a fantastic job of bringing such a fresh direction to the series and gives us such a powerful character filled moment story.
Overall A Quiet Place: Day One is one of the best films so far this year, never did I expect to cry my eyes out to a film in the Quiet Place series. But as they say life is full of surprises.
A Quiet Place: Day One is currently in theaters.
10/10 A+
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