Fears that John Krasinski’s gripping, nail-biting sci-fi/horror series might “do a Cloverfield” in the third entry into what has become an unlikely franchise are mercifully unfounded in A Quiet Place: Day One. Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski (with Krasinski exec producing and sharing a story credit), Day One is as tense and unnerving as the previous two films in the series, but its emphasis on character over spectacle – although there’s plenty of spectacle for action-hounds – makes for a slightly subtler and more intimate piece.
As the title suggests, we’re right back at the start of the chaos as New York is attacked by hordes of vicious, vaguely arachnid aliens that hunt by sound. As in the previous films, the slightest sound – a footstep, the crack of something underfoot, a human cry of sheer terror – spells instant death. But in the hours before the arrival of the creature, we meet Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), suffering from terminal cancer and living with her service cat Frodo (the star of the show in so many ways) in a hospice outside the city. She reluctantly agrees to join a group of fellow patients on a bus trip to the theatre, understanding that there’ll be pizza from her favourite childhood pizza parlour on the way home. But from the outset, it’s clear that something’s not right; jet planes scream overhead, sirens blare in the distance, and there’s a palpable sense of dread and unease building because we, at least, know what’s coming. When it comes, it’s carnage. Meteors, presumably bearing the aliens, bombard the city, and all hell breaks loose.
The city falls silent almost immediately, and Sam meets up with fellow survivor Eric (Joseph Quinn), a shell-shocked English law student. She tries to shake him off and send him toward evacuation boats leaving from the other side of the city, but they stick together and soon form a bond of trust forged from a mutual instinct for survival. Their friendship is gentle and sweet-natured and never descends into mawkishness and sentimentality – Sarnoski sensibly avoids drawing them into a cliched romantic relationship.
There are a number of hugely exciting action sequences and moments of extreme peril for the pair (and Frodo), and despite its relatively small budget of just under $70 million, the film creates a real sense of scale and scenes of New York under attack and its bridges blown up in an attempt to contain the alien threat, are hugely impressive because there’s a sense of torn-from-the-headlines realism to them. We’re familiar with the threat now from the previous films but taking the story back to the very beginning (whilst sharing some connective tissue to the previous films via an appearance from Djimon Hounsou from Part Two) and placing it a recognisable modern urban setting makes them even more implacable and terrifying than ever before.
Scary, suspenseful and driven by two well-developed characters we genuinely care about despite the fact that, by the very nature of the film, they barely speak to one another, A Quiet Place: Day One is another assured and mature entry in possibly the most reliable genre film series of the 21st century.
A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE is in cinemas in the UK and around the world now
