A Quiet Place: Day One Review

 

A Quiet Place: Day One is a apocalyptic horror movie, serving as the third installment of the A Quiet Place series, with this one being a prequel to the first film. It's produced by Platinum Dunes and Sunday Night Productions and distributed by Paramount Pictures. A Quiet Place: Day One is written by Michael Sarnoski and John Krasinski and directed by Michael Sarnoski.

The story is, everybody was just living a normal life in The Big Apple. That all changes within an instance when meteors come down from the sky, and hostile extraterrestrials start a rampage. Now, people need to stay quiet if they want to stay alive.

Initial Reaction

Having enjoyed the first two movies, I was really looking forward to this. Although initially I wanted to see the characters from the first two appear, but then I thought, "Ya know what? Different characters from a different setting, would not only set it apart from the first two, but also give us a very different perspective".

Cons

I've got nothing.

Middle Ground

The biggest mix bag is the story. First let's go over the good. What everybody loves about this is franchise is, yes, there are monsters causing chaos, and that is fun but, the movies always focus on the human aspect. With this, a woman named Samira aka Sam, is terminally ill then the creatures show up. So now she just wants to spend her last days on her terms despite the world going straight to hell. That's actually a pretty fascinating story and the writers handled really well. But where the story loses you is we really go into familiar territory. I thought we would see how exactly people would figure out how to survive the aliens. It starts off well, but the moment Sam is knocked out cold, people know to stay quiet and all additional information is given by emergency personnel flying in helicopters. Yeah...they missed out on a big opportunity.

Pros

Even though I slightly criticized the story, there's still some really good suspense. One moment that made me tense up and hold my breath was one another character named Eric was damn near cheek to cheek with one of the monsters. That moment freaked me out. Cause imagine that, ya think things going fine, then next thing you know, a big ugly man eating monster is directly next to you, and the only thing not getting you killed at this moment, is you not uttering so much as a single peep. Yeah, kind of terrifying when you think about it. My other praise goes to Michael Sarnoski's directing. Now I did see his previous movie [Pig]. That was a small indy flick, so I was skeptical when it came to this, even though Day One itself also doesn't have too crazy of a budget, he surprised me and did a great job. And while he handled the bigger monsters moments, it seems like he's best suited for more character driven stories, and he absolutely nailed whenever the story called for more slower, character developing scenes. The last praise I'll give is the performances. Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn are strong on their own but also have good chemistry together. And while their more dialogue moments are good, it's incredible how both of them were able say a lot only through facial expressions and body language.

While A Quiet Place: Day One isn't going to be my favorite one of the franchise, I still had some sort of fun with it.

My final rating is, Good.

That's all for now. Come back on Thursday, Jul 4th, for my Classic Film Night review of, Platoon. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.