A Quiet Place: Day One review | A worthy, stressful prequel

a quiet place day one (1)
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Michael Sarnoski’s disaster horror prequel proves to be a surprisingly emotional journey. Here’s our A Quiet Place: Day One review. 


This year’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga proved that great prequels are possible. George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road precursor was a fine film in its own right, but also fit into the world of Mad Max effortlessly. 

Pig director Michael Sarnoski attempts the same with A Quiet Place: Day One, a prequel which promises to show us the day “the world went quiet”. Based on the franchise kickstarted by John Krasinski with his 2018 hit A Quiet Place and its 2021 follow-up A Quiet Place Part II, Day One is, by design, a completely different type of film than its predecessors. 

The film follows Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam, a terminally ill woman who just happens to be in New York City as aliens land on Earth, wreaking havoc all around the place. As we know from the first film, these aliens are blind and hunt by sound, so staying quiet is the only way to stay safe. 

Sam, along with her cat, Frodo, come across Eric (Joseph Quinn), a lost young man, who finds it particularly difficult to navigate the chaos and silence of the world under attack. The two are forced to rely on each other to stay alive as they travel across the city.

a quiet place day one trailer (1)
Credit: Paramount Pictures

Day One is, essentially, a film about getting pizza. No, really, and we promise it actually works in the film’s context. With Pig, Sarnoski proved himself to be a very clever and emotionally tuned filmmaker, and for such a big budget, spectacle-filled film, Day One feels intimate and poignant. 

A Quiet Place, all the way back in 2018, was a stressful experience in cinema. Krasinski’s film used silence to its advantage and never has munching popcorn been such a taxing task. Day One uses the same tricks and recreates the same atmosphere and terror. This is another highly nerve-wracking film and I’m fairly sure I developed a stomach ulcer from the stress. There were plenty of moments where I forgot to breathe in order to not attract any aliens. You could say I was fully immersed in the action. 

The biggest issue here is that it mostly repeats everything Krasinski already achieved with his films. Much like Inside Out 2, the narrative fails to uncover anything new, even if the emotional beats are on point. The sound design, as expected, is very good, but nothing in the film feels all that surprising or fresh.

Things are helped enormously by the committed cast. Nyong’o is particularly excellent at portraying silent terror, but it’s Quinn who proves to be the film’s secret weapon. In films like this, we’re used to seeing characters adapt to the circumstances quickly and relatively effortlessly. Quinn’s Eric, compared to the likes of Joel in The Last Of Us and Nicolas Cage in Arcadian, is quicker to cry and panic than improvise his way out of the apocalypse. 

Yet, Sarnoski never plays this as a weakness. If anything, Eric’s emotionality lends Day One more humanity, makes everything feel more real and thus has us more invested in what happens to these characters. Quinn and Nyong’o also craft a believable, at times thorny dynamic between two strangers who are fighting for their lives but are equally lost.

Sarnoski is also surprisingly confident in handling the big action stuff. There’s some dodgy green screen use, but for the most part, Day One looks excellent and is crafted with care. The initial attack especially is delicately and terrifyingly staged. We see more of the alien design as well, and it’s all very majestic, but the most impressive element of the film is just how well it all comes together. 

A Quiet Place: Day One is a very pleasant surprise. I’m not sure there’s much more fuel in the franchise’s tank after this, but three good films should be good enough for anyone. 

A Quiet Place: Day One is in UK cinemas 28th June. 

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