Synopsis:
Experience the day the world went quiet.
What We Thought:
I’m not the biggest fan of the A Quiet Place franchise. I think they are well made and have great casts, but they lay out many ground rules that they eventually break or have characters doing things that would never happen in the real world. With A Quiet Place: Day One being a prequel I was hoping it would be different enough compared to the first two films that I would enjoy it more. Unfortunately after ten minutes or so, it’s just another A Quiet Place movie.
The film opens in New York with a few characters that we think will be the focus of the film. They go into the city for a puppet show and aliens come to Earth. NYC turns to chaos with death and destruction everywhere. Despite never encountering beings from another world before, the humans quickly learn that the creatures get them through sound and Lupita Nyong’o becomes our Emily Blunt for this film. She’s the lead we follow who instantly adapts to her new world and wants to save her cat and get pizza.
That’s my biggest complaint with the film, within moments the surviving humans know the weakness of the creatures. How? One minute you’re going about your daily routine, then aliens come to Earth and the next minute you’re telling people to be quiet or they will die. That’s a bit of a stretch to me. In the original films the alien existence had already been established on Earth by the time the audience sees the film, the humans knowing how to survive them makes sense.
Plus I didn’t find the human response believable. If the past few years have taught us anything, if something like this occurred there would be rioting, looting and humans killing each other to survive. At no point in the movie does one New Yorker pull a gun on an alien or a human, only the military tries to fight the aliens. I’m supposed to believe in a city of millions there isn’t one person with a (legal or illegal) concealed carry who wouldn’t stop to fire at the aliens? Or even worse, his fellow man? It’s survival time and you’re on an island, people are going to open fire The Purge style. Nyong’o and her co-star end up at a bar at one point with alcohol still sitting on the shelves. No one ran into the bar to grab the booze to set fire to things? No one is trying to make improvised Molotov cocktails to take down the creatures?
Another issue is the tone of the film. The second act is Nyong’o and her male co-star trying to get pizza along with her cat. That is her entire mission, get pizza at a joint in Harlem she has good memories of. I won’t spoil anything about her character and why this is her lone mission, but it feels more like Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle with aliens than it does a serious sci-fi/horror drama. At points it feels like I Am Legend, but with a cat. At other times it’s Rogue One, a prequel with standalone new characters that will eventually tie into the film that comes after it in the storyline.
Lupita Nyong’o does the best she can in A Quiet Place: Day One, but she deserves better than this. The film doesn’t earn its ending and most of the cast is underused. I like Djimon Hounsou, but he is completely unnecessary in the film. If they continue the franchise I probably won’t see them because after three total films so far I’m just not into them. If you are a fan you’ll probably like this although most of the people around me didn’t really enjoy the movie either.
The Nerds Templar 