‘A Quiet Place: Day 1’: Let the end of the world catch you eating pizza

In ‘A Quiet Place’, John Krasinski introduced us to a family who, on the 89th day after an alien invasion, were trying not only to survive, but to make it worth living. It embraced the complexity of humanity, it was a song to beauty in the midst of disaster, to hope, and an exceptional exercise in style within the genre with impeccable character construction. Its prequel, however, ‘A Quiet Place: Day 1’, bets everything on the spectacle, on the survival adventure, at a fast pace and great horror scenes, the perfect formula to maintain the tension for 99 minutes, which is not easy, but the emotional factor suffers. And the surprise factor. And the formal one too.

Talking about a prequel might lead one to think that in ‘A Quiet Place: Day 1’ we would discover more about the invasion, the creatures or how humanity somehow managed to adapt to them, so perhaps we should rather talk about a spin-off: This is the story of a woman, Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), going against the grain on the day of the invasion in search of a slice of pizza. Samira suffers from terminal cancer that causes her tremendous physical pain. With no expectations of the future to hold onto to survive, the only thing Samira wants is to eat a slice of pizza from the place where, as a child, she went with her father. The end of the world may be coming today, but her world was already in timeout after having surpassed the life expectancy established by her diagnosis.

By the way, Samira meets Eric (Joseph Quinn), who signs up as a squire on this culinary crusade. We can understand her, we can see her resignation and resilience in the face of death, that her survival instinct gives way to a superfluous whim, we can understand that she is grieving for a life that she left behind long before the arrival of the creatures and that He just wants to taste it once more. Not to him.

Quinn, who already faced a demogorgon in ‘Stranger Things’, handles the action sequences with ease and has almost as good chemistry with Nyong’o as with the cat, Frodo. But there is no way to understand what pushes Eric to enter a post-apocalyptic New York other than going through an episode of post-traumatic stress that clouds his judgment. Eric is the archetypal horror movie character who can’t stop making bad decisions.

The shame is that we don’t see enough of Alex Wolff, and not just because he’s proving to be one of the most interesting actors of his generation after Hereditary, Time and Pig (which Sarnoski directed). Wolff plays Reuben, one of Samira’s nurses at the palliative care centre where she lives, but he doesn’t have much dramatic weight in the story and it’s bittersweet to think about all the character could offer.

Nothing new falls from the sky

‘A Quiet Place: Day 1’ is not innovative in practically any aspect, not even in the use of sound, and that is how it brings a different approach to the saga. With an already established lore, its director, Michael Sarnoski – who also writes the script with Krasinski – focuses on raising the scare jumps and the set piece action, in using the excellent special effects that the film has to exploit the violent attacks of the aliens and create the constant sense of danger on top of a conventional monster movie formula. While its predecessors played with anticipation, this installment is predictable and bland. That’s why the melodrama of their characters is even received as irrelevant when all this tension suddenly stops for them. The only common link between the first two installments and this prequel is the almost anecdotal appearance of Djimon Hounsou.

Also the change of setting, from the intimacy of the country house to the imposing and noisy streets of New York, the city that never sleeps, and a substantial increase in the budget help Sarnoski deliver a larger survival epic, Exploiting their strengths -the creatures- and disguising its shortcomings – the dramatic arc. The first scene of the attack is tremendous, with Nyong’o running in a cloud of dust and the monsters attacking in the shadows, or the chase on the subway tracks (although the whole cat theme here is no suspension of disbelief that endurance).

In summary, ‘A Quiet Place: Day 1’ is extremely solvent as a horror thriller and action film, but I have had serious problems connecting and understanding its protagonists. I appreciate that you want to offer something more than a horror journey with aliens, but no matter how delicious the pizza is, the emotional background, that story about connection, about finding what makes you happy and warms your heart through adversity, It has also remained silent.