The long-awaited prequel to ‘A Quiet Place’ has finally arrived in theaters; this story will show us the first time the terrifying extraterrestrial creatures that we already know quite well arrived on Earth, and how in a matter of days they took over our entire planet.
The film is written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, who has delivered other great gems such as ‘Pig’ with Nicolas Cage; in addition, it has the participation of great Hollywood stars such as Lupita Nyong’O, who we saw in Jordan Peele’s horror film, ‘Us’; Alex Wolf, who you may remember from his appearance in A24’s ‘Hereditary’; Joseph Quinn who played Eddie Munson in ‘Stranger Things’, and more.
‘A Quiet Place: Day One’: What To Expect
The first installment of this horror and science fiction franchise was directed and adapted to film in 2018 by John Krasinski, whom you may remember for appearing in the sitcom ‘The Office’ or for briefly appearing as Reed Richards in ‘Dr. Strange in The Multiverse of Madness’.
At that time, the film was very well received for giving us a horror story like it had not been seen in a long time, getting the green light for new productions that would nourish this universe more. Now we know that there is a second part and the prequel that we will talk about here, and even a video game that will arrive soon.
One of the main successes of the first installment was to have included a deaf character (played by Millicent Simmonds) with whom the family was not only able to adapt to a world where there is no sound but, as an audience, allowed us to know a little more about deaf culture. Another great success was to have structured the film so that the characters had to force themselves to stay hidden from danger, which we will address later.
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In the second installment, the structure changes, and now the film becomes a chase, the characters are no longer kept hidden because they no longer have a home to keep them safe and now they must find other people to survive and fight together for the planet.
The deaf culture and the character that represents it begins to be left aside and, rather, is replaced by the spectacle and the suspense scenes that are also good, but certainly, conventional, making this movie not bad at all, but no longer with the heart with which the first part was made.
In this case, ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ seems to have learned from the successes and mistakes of its predecessors to give us a film that has everything but doesn’t know what to do with it.
As many of us expected, this film tells us about the first day that the ‘Angels of Death’ arrived on our planet, and how human beings must adapt to survive. At the same time, we will meet the characters of Samira (Lupita Nyong’O), a young woman with cancer and her small assistant cat, and Eric (Joseph Quinn), a young man who is studying to be a lawyer.
A film that shows us the “first day” of the apocalypse should give priority to the spectacularity of the arrival of these monsters to our planet, however, they do not show us more than a single shot where we see meteorites fall (just as we have seen before), that is, it is not showing us anything new, unfortunately.
The characters, on the other hand, might be the highlight of the film: a young woman who’s tired of fighting with her own body, a young man who doesn’t have a home, and a cat with more than nine lives who effortlessly steals the film.
However, the great success that the first film related to deaf culture brought us, in this case, was completely left aside, and for many, that was vital to make the first installment something completely different. Again, the movie no longer feels like the characters need to be kept hidden, but everything becomes a chase.
Putting all of the above together, this is not a bad movie (nor was ‘A Quiet Place 2’); however, the spirit that characterized the first one has been completely lost, and that has caused this installment not to become anything memorable, in fact, it becomes sadly conventional, remaining in second or third place within the franchise.
