A Quiet Place Day One Review (with spoilers)

The first two "A Quiet Place" films explored the horror of the blind but extremely-tough-to-kill aliens with super sharp hearing taking over the Earth and how humans (the few that survive their onslaught) had to quickly learn to stay silent in every single thing they could do physically. If a human had to survive on Earth, learning the art of super-stealth in basically everything you did (like walking, washing the clothes, moving around, etc) became the most important skillset to develop if you wanted to survive. While the narrative in "A Quiet Place (2018)" and its direct sequel "A Quiet Place: Part II (2020)" almost entirely focussed on the Abbots and their children and are set in a post-apocalyptic world after the blind monsters have overrun the Earth, "A Quiet Place: Day One" is a standalone prequel with a fresh set of characters that shows what happened on Day One when the sightless-but-heavily-armoured aliens dropped from the skies. Michael Sarnoski, well-known for "Pig", is the film director, who also shares writing credits with Bryan Woods and John Krasinski for the prequel to A Quiet Place (AQP).

Sammy (Samira or Sam, played by Lupita Nyong'o), her cat Frodo and Eric (played by Joesph Quinn) are the three main characters in A Quiet Place Day One. Sammy is a cancer patient, a terminally ill one, who lives in a hospice far from New York City and hasn’t got a lot of days left. Death approaches quickly, faster than it would to perfectly healthy people, and her days are numbered. That's one reason she wants to have a proper pizza so bad when male nurse Reuben (played by Alex Wolff) tells her they plan to go to the city. Last time the people living in the hospice got pizza, even Reuben didn't have it, because “that wasn't pizza”, as per Sammy.

Sammy wants a pizza that's up to her standards. To have such a pizza, she has to go to the city. Reuben talks her into accompanying the hospice group to the city on the promise of getting a true pizza. The group is taken to a puppet show where we see Djimon Hounsou’s Henri, the only connecting link with the previous A Quiet Place films.

A Quiet Place: Day One does not take very long to build more background for the characters and a short while after Reuben rushes to get everyone aboard the bus after getting a call, the aliens smash into the city from the skies. Carnage soon follows as humans are caught totally unaware of the threat that's among us and is ripping them apart and eliminating them. A few like Henri are able to figure out that the aliens can’t see, only hear, and hence make the decision to hunker down in the buildings for the time being, trying to stay as silent as possible. If the aliens can't hear you, you are out of immediate danger as they are totally blind. Henri saves Sammy, and she reunites with Reuben in the puppet theatre.

Even after the blind, armoured aliens go on a rampage in the city, Sammy still wants a pizza. She wants one of the tastiest experiences that life has to offer before death takes away this reality from her. That's okay in some ways. Samira's cancer is eating away at her from the insides, and she wants to make sure that she gets the pizza, one delicious experience still before death claims her. She has no idea that the United States and the world soon after will be dominated by the alien monsters that fell from the skies.

After the alien invasion, Sammy understands that she won't be able to make it to the hospice soon (no one can expect to start a vehicle and reach somewhere due to the clearly obvious makes-sound-must-kill rule of the aliens for lifeforms on Earth) and if she is in the city for long, she better have that pizza for which she was cajoled by Reuben into coming to the city. Besides, the United States air force blows up all the bridges connecting the city to the outside world.

But slightly more than the cancer, there is a stronger reason why Samira wants to have pizza in the city (and from Patsy's only). Because that pizza from Patsy's is a part of her childhood memories, when she used to go and visit the pizzeria with her dad, an accomplished piano player. Sam is a celebrated poet herself, as we get to know later.

A Quiet Place Day One's Frodo the cat does not purr at all, the logic of which baffled me. Perhaps Frodo the cat understands that its meowing will be the death of her. If you are willing to believe in that reasoning, only then it makes some sense in the storyline.

In a world that’s become extremely dangerous to live within hours, Sammy meets Eric, who’s terrified of being alone and keeps following her, much to her consternation. She relents after a while and allows him to walk with her.

When Eric and Sammy take shelter in a house whose door Eric opens with a strong kick, I felt that Eric was talking louder than you would expect someone in A Quiet Place universe. Why take such chances? The scene where Sam motions Eric to time his kicks as per the thunderclap noise felt smart in theory. But even then, I thought the kicks sounded louder than you would expect an blind AQP alien to ignore.

For those who have seen A Quiet Place (AQP) films, there are many reasons to be unsatisfied with A Quiet Place: Day One. Instead of focusing on scenes of terror, AQP Day One could have been a lot better narrative-and-story-element wise.

We just get to see the aliens attack Earth, and their manner of attack is not something AQP fans haven’t seen in the past two films.

A point worth thinking on is that there must be a more powerful species on the aliens’ planet to keep them in check, because if not, the aliens would have wiped their planet clean of any animal form fast enough. Or should we believe that they are smart enough to kill just enough so that they can feed themselves, and leave the rest for the future. How did their planet explode? A Quiet Place Day One does not even speculate on these points. Fans of AQP invest an hour and a half for a very promising prequel and you just don't get away with showing two folks from different walks of life share life stories and try and escape the aliens.

Character-wise, A Quiet Place: Day One has a strong story for the lead protagonist Samira. Sam is dying quickly. She knows that but tries to live like a normal human anyway. On a personal level, her story is universally likeable. A Quiet Place: Day One brings out the frustrations humans can feel (and so quickly) if almost unkillable monsters start devouring them. The scene where both Sam and Eric scream one by one shows that they (in fact, no one) wanted this apocalypse. Life was not a bed of roses for working people before an alien invasion happened and made it even hard to talk to someone in a normal tone.

Overall, A Quiet Place: Day One would be appreciated by newcomers to the A Quiet Place franchise as it does not tie in to the previous films. It has strong characters and the themes of humanity, courage and having a zest for life no matter what you’ve been through make it a recommended watch for horror and drama fans alike. However, the film gives nothing new to folks who have seen both A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place: Part II, and does not go into the backstory of the aliens that fans have always wanted to see.