A Quiet Place: Day One

Written and directed by: Michael Sarnoski

Written by: John Krasinski

It is the day the world changed. Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) is a terminal cancer patient in a hospice just outside of New York. She’s part of a group who head into the city for a show. But it’s there that the Aliens, who attack based on sound, land and create carnage. As people try to escape, Sam has one goal, to go home, via her favourite pizza parlour. On her journey she meets Eric (Joseph Quinn) scared and lost and a long way from home. Together they aim to get Eric to the river and supposed safety, and Sam to take her last days on her own terms.

The problem with making a prequel to A Quiet Place (which was hinted at at the end of Part Two) was always whether you could tell an interesting story about how the world was plunged into silence. It may well be possible but Day One, unfortunately, is not it.

It starts out as a promising premise. It does some clever things around introducing quiet into a world of noise. Sam’s world is a quiet one, a hospice a quiet world of contemplation. A marionette show that is about quiet performance as a way to communicate. And then the event itself, how people adjust, the panic of an unknown attacker and suddenly becoming  prey. It’s tense and action packed for 45 minutes.

But then it feels like it runs out of good ideas and moves into a selection of random actions that make no sense. While Sam’s story of wanting to return home to end her life on her terms make sense. Eric’s much less so.

Lupita Nyong’o is good in the lead role, but there is very little to work with. But even less so for Quinn, whose character makes little sense and there’s a an atrociously underused Djimon Hounsou. And even at 99 minutes it drags.

The risk in making a Quiet Place prequel is whether you could find an interesting story. If you can, Day One, doesn’t tell it. It starts off promisingly but runs out of ideas quickly and descends into a bit of a nonsensical mess and, even at 99 minutes, began to drag and had me thinking of shouting out and letting them come and get me!