Rent A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

A dull place - A Quiet Place: Day One review by LW

The first film was an entertaining creature feature and the sequel amped up the action. This prequel has no clear idea of what it is about. It doesn't offer any clues as to what the monsters are or why modern firepower couldn't stop them. We get a street level view in the style of Cloverfield in the form of a terminally ill poet who gets stranded in New York and goes looking for pizza. This character is insipid and meets some equally wet blankets along the way. Luckily she has her cat in tow or there would be nobody to root for. The set pieces are few and formulaic and tension never builds. The central character doesn't get her pizza and decides that life isn't worth living. Much like the audience. It wants to be evocative and poignant but it feels forced and trite with the whole thing an excuse for some cgi cityscapes. The monsters remain as elusive as the point of this snooze fest

A Quiet Place - Means We Can't Hear The Moaning About This Great Film, so Win-Win - A Quiet Place: Day One review by Strovey

The original Quiet Place was derivative of the Matthew Fox starrer Extinction (check it out) but was a good film in its own right and enjoyable although a few plot points and storylines made little to no sense. The second film was weaker and spoiled the chance to expand the story in a significant way. So there is a lot of credit here to John Krasinski who from interviews seems to have deliberately moved away from his tales and wanted to go in a different direction, with a new location, new actors, new writers and director and I have to say for me it works.

Lupita Nyong’o is a great actor and is given a protagonist with a bit more about her in a tale like this. She is terminally ill and is basically fed up and uncaring. Now put her in a situation where noise means death how would she react to it? How would you? I find this interesting. Then add in Joseph Quinn, who more than holds his own in the acting stakes, who is kind and terrified to paralysis and you have something different for this type of tale.

Focussing on the relationship and characters and having the alien monsters as almost supporting cast is a good, interesting and dare I say challenging idea. The film puts you in their place, so from start to finish both Sam and Eric have no idea what is happening, why or what the attackers are, just like if this incident occurred you or I would.

Too many films wrap up tales and story points with exposition and unlikely interactions. A huge sci-fi franchise for instance where every single character bumps into the people at the very top of the command chain. My dad was always having tea with Winston Churchill in World War Two, so it could happen. Except it does not.

The film is gripping, and you do feel peril for the two, but it does not rely on gore or jump scares, only aftermath gore. Again, it is better for this.

Included in the story, something that seemed made entirely for me; in the first two films the aliens just killed people, the did not even eat them, seemed to kill them for no reason and run off, especially in the sequel. Here we see a sort of nest where it looks as if victims are cultivated for food or an ‘alien’ nursery, I could not tell if my view on this was correct, and no one explained it or even talked about it in the story. At last, someone understands proper storytelling, let the viewer do some friggin’ work.

New York looked devastated, Lupita looked peed off and Joseph looked scared and the monsters seemed more realistic to me, not faultless, car alarms fooled them and water does them in.

After the film ended I did a bit of looking for general opinions of the film and found out why I do not go the cinema much nowadays and watch films on my own.

Dozens and dozens of complaints that the aliens were not ‘explained’, not enough aliens attacking tanks, not enough death, mayhem and explosions. It was noted with much mirth and derision Nyong’o’s character just ‘wants to get a pizza, how stupid’.

The story explains why she wants a pizza very clearly at the end, it makes sense and it is clear and obvious.

Furthermore, she has a terminal illness and no matter what happens she is not going to survive. The story has to focus on survivors, otherwise there is no story, seeing monstrous aliens attacking where they are in numbers in exciting and graphic action means they would not survive, just like in real life none of us would.

I think some people might need to watch things other than CGI-infested explosion-fests.

Day One is a good alien invasion horror film, the strongest in the trilogy for the setting, the acting and the story.

Of the many films I have seen recently I would watch it again, in fact I might do before I post it back to Cinema Paradiso, and I might even buy the Blu Ray. Easily the best horror/sci-fi/monster film I have seen in quite some time.

Finally, if you love cats, you will love this film.

Tense, Well Made SciFi/Horror Prequel - A Quiet Place: Day One review by GI

It could be argued that after the originality of the A Quiet Place (2018) and its 2020 sequel there would be little left to add to this story. But here's a prequel that adds a disaster movie vibe, a great lead performance and actually nicely sets the scene for the events of the original film. In that one the survivors of the alien invasion have learnt how to live in silence whereas here the sudden arrival of hordes of predatory alien creatures that hunt by the slightest sound but are blind, means survivors have to adapt very, very quickly indeed. This is set in New York and follows terminal cancer sufferer Samira (Lupita Nyong'o), who is caught in the city when the aliens arrive. Managing to escape the initial onslaught she meets Eric, a shy British man, and they both travel through the city trying to survive the constant presence of the creatures, which have a nasty habit of creeping right up to your face in their hunt for you. This is not the only similarity you can spot to Ridley Scott's iconic Alien, there's also Samira's service cat which senses the creatures. Indeed the cat is a plot device a little overused here but this is a small niggle because this is a well made, gripping science fiction/horror/survival film that entertains throughout and fits nicely with the other two. Dijon Hounsou has a support role linking this with the later films. If you liked the first two then this is worth your time.