Day One, with more lives than a cat

A Quiet Place: Day One (USA, UK, 2024), the prequel to the successful A Quiet Place (2018, Krasinski), is three films in one: a survival horror film with some well-made moments, an unexpected (and therefore somewhat ridiculous) romantic film, and a very improbable and somewhat desperate film about a cat that walks the streets of New York while it is invaded by aliens. For the comfort of the respectable, nothing will ever happen to the cat.

Ridiculous.

And before you attack me, I clarify: I love cats, and in complete abuse of this space I will mention the two cats in my life, Mandala, who unfortunately has since passed away, and Haneke, who is still with us despite a recent illness.

Would any of them have survived an alien attack in the middle of New York, with explosions, screams and predatory entities that locate you and kill you at the slightest noise you make? Probably yes, what is not plausible is that neither Mandala nor Haneke, after getting lost again and again and again in the middle of this post-apocalyptic scenario, found me. Because to begin with, I would surely be dead by now, and to continue, they wouldn’t really care where I am or if I’m okay. They are cats: they care about surviving, period.

In fact, there was a moment when I thought the movie would just be about the cat, surviving like in the video game. Stray (Annapurna Interactive) It’s a great game, but if you like cats, don’t play it because it’s about a kitten (the player) who must survive in a city walled in by robots, machines, and mutant organisms. It’s very distressing.

I haven’t been able to finish that game, I die hundreds of times. But you know who never dies? The cat A Quiet Place: Day One. At first you’re grateful, because no one wants to see a cat die, but by the third or fourth time the cat gets lost and comes back, it becomes absurd.

The cat in question belongs to Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), a woman with stage 4 cancer. Sam lives in a kind of hospital with other companions of his who are also in terminal stages. As part of the activities, the patients go on a bus to New York for a ride, but Sam is only interested in one thing: eating a slice of pizza at his favorite restaurant in Harlem, Patsy’s. The bad thing is that this trip takes place on the very day of the alien invasion that gave rise to the first film and now we will witness how it all began. Or almost.

It is interesting that the main character in a movie survival horror (survival horror) is precisely someone who no longer cares so much about surviving. This does not diminish Sam’s will and fortitude, who literally goes against the current and decides that if he is going to die, he will not do so without first going to Harlem for his much desired pizza.

We have seen the scenes before: the streets of an empty monumental city, the massive destruction, the explosions, and the exodus of people looking for a way to safety. But not Sam, she wants her pizza.

Along the way, her cat (named Frodo, and who are actually two cat actors) will escape through her hands and magically return to her again and again. In one of those many turns, the cat brings with him a “friend,” Eric (Joseph Quinn), an Englishman who had just moved to New York and who suddenly decides to stay with Sam and his kitty.

Because? Well, because that’s how the script wanted it (written by the director himself, Michael Sarnoski). And that’s good, because if anything saves this pastiche from disaster, it is precisely this couple that projects great chemistry and fragility on screen. They both say it all with their looks and silence. One comes to this film for the bumps, for the aliens, but Sarnoski makes us stay for the humans, for this couple who, more than surviving, seeks to give meaning to life in the midst of chaos, even if that meaning is a sad pizza.

As expected, the film does not have much dialogue, however the film manages to capture even the most reluctant audience: those who believe that when the characters in a film stop talking it is time for the audience to do so. Unlike that time I saw the original film, here no one, absolutely no one spoke during the film.

This is something that is no longer seen every day in Hollywood cinema: the film forces its director to show instead of explain, and Sarnoski does this very well during the scarce 100 minutes that the film lasts.

In his magnificent debut, PIG (2021), Michael Sarnoski told the story of a retired chef whose pet pig is kidnapped. The animal becomes the McGuffin that triggers all the action in that delirious and passionate film. Sarnoski apparently has a thing for animals, here the kitten is the McGuffin that drives the plot forward, but since this is a blockbuster, he can’t do the obvious, which would be to kill the sad cat that would obviously have either gotten lost at the first explosion or fallen prey to the aliens at the first meow. The only option is to take literally the idea that cats have nine lives and maintain, ridiculously, throughout the entire film, that absolutely nothing happens to the cat.

However, I’ve decided that I don’t care about the above: I’ll stick with the other two films, the one with exciting sequences (great audio editing, watch it in IMAX) of an iconic city destroyed by aliens (I know, it’s not the first time, nor will it be the last), and the one about two human beings who connect right on the edge of the end of the world, with Nina Simone’s music in the background.

Bravo.