Lupita Nyong’o in ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’.
| Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures/YouTube
One of the most shocking things about A Quiet Place: Day One is Michael Bay is one of the producers! It boggles the mind that the monarch of Bay-hem is behind this film, where silence is the only way to stay alive. The third entry into the A Quiet Place film series, following A Quiet Place (2018) and A Quiet Place Part II (2020), both directed by John Krasinski, A Quiet Place: Day One follows a terminally ill poet, Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) and a British law student, Eric (Joseph Quinn) as they trek from Manhattan to Harlem in search of a pizza.
A Quiet Place: Day One
Director: Michael Sarnoski
Starring: Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsou
Runtime: 99 minutes
Storyline: On the day the blind aliens attacked, a terminally ill patient and her service cat have to find a way to survive and get that pizza!
Yes, it seems a bizarre thing to do, especially when the blind aliens with an acute sense of hearing are laying New York and the world (which is the same thing in Hollywood) waste. I have not made up my mind whether watching the film on Screen X added to or distracted from the movie experience. If the screens on the sides were curved around the sight line instead of being at right angles, it would have made a difference. Anyway, after a point, you ignore the expansion of the screen.
There, unfortunately, is not much apocalyptic destruction, as most of it happens off-screen. The aliens look like first cousins of the Xenomorphs (we cannot wait for August 16 and Alien: Romulus), skittering about the place, breaking glass, and hurling themselves from great heights at the hapless survivors.
The scene where Sam finds herself with other survivors of the alien apocalypse, including Henri (Djimon Hounsou reprises his role from A Quiet Place Part II) in a partially destroyed church, is one of unspeakable beauty. The ruby red and the glittering blue of stained glass windows that survive are reminders of the beauty to be found amidst the worst carnage.
The puppet show, or rather the marionette show as Sam’s nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff) calls it, is also one of gossamer beauty. The acting is anchored by a moving performance by Nyong’o. She is the one who has us believing it is worthwhile journeying across the city to get a pizza, which is not just a pie but a harkening to happier times when Sam’s jazz pianist father would take her for a post-performance pizza at Patsy’s.
Sam’s service cat, Frodo, also turns in a performance of a lifetime, seemingly laughing beneath its whiskers at the scurrying humans. The abandoned bookstore seems like a dream come true — who would not like to spend hours on end at a quirky bookstore at the end of the world in absolute silence?
A Quiet Place: Day One is currently running in theatres