‘A Quiet Place: Day One’: Once more, with feline
My dog would never survive. that’s what I kept thinking during “A Quiet place: Day one,” a pet lover’s fantasy of a franchise film. I’m no fan of prequels and sequels — I’d much rather see Hollywood take risks with novel ideas than rely on an endless stream of reboots. but “Day one” just about justifies its existence with a pair of savvy casting decisions: lupita Nyong’o and a cat.
From the filmmaker Michael sarnoski — who earned acclaim with another human-animal movie, the Nicolas Cage-starring “pig” — this newest “Quiet place” installment largely relies on the same simmering suspense and tricks of soundscape as the first movie and its sequel. the big change (other than the feline addition) is that the apocalyptic drama has been relocated to New York City, where, as an opening intertitle notes, the cacophony of traffic and construction reaches an average sound level of 90 decibels, much like a human scream. It’s no wonder that the hulking, spidery aliens — who rely on noise to locate prey — target Manhattan; with all that clamor, they clean up quickly.
the story opens before the pandemonium, in the hospice center where sam (Nyong’o), along with her service cat, Frodo (the feline performers schnitzel and Nico), resides. We meet sam, who is significantly younger than the hospice’s other residents, at a group support meeting led by the kindly, ponytailed nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff ); rolling her eyes, she cradles Frodo while reciting an original poem that features a string of curse words and complaints. From the fentanyl patch on her torso (and a few sentences of exposition), we intuit that sam has terminal cancer and is already living on borrowed time.
the tranquil scene dissipates once Reuben convinces sam to join a group field trip to a play in Manhattan, promising her pizza on the way home. they only get partway through the show before chaos descends, forcing sam, Reuben, and a band of other audience members to shelter, silently, inside the theater as the creatures decimate anyone making noise outside.
Eventually, sirens and radio announcements encourage residents to make their way toward the seaport in lower Manhattan, where boats have assembled to transport people off the island, since the aliens — despite their hulking size and wall-scaling abilities — can’t swim. but sam has other plans. she’s sick, in pain, and really, really wants pizza. so she resolves to walk up to Harlem to get what she understands will be the last slice of her life.
Much of the elegance of the “Quiet place” movies lies in their devotion to showing rather than telling; it’s mighty difficult to convey information through dialogue when the characters can’t speak above a whisper. In “Day one,” this modus operandi proves especially useful in developing the film’s most important relationship: between sam and a panic-stricken man named Eric (Joseph Quinn) — or, I should say, among sam, Eric, and Frodo. After surfacing alone in a flooded subway, Eric follows the cat back to sam, who reluctantly (and eventually more graciously) allows Eric to tag along with them.
their bond evolves over several escape sequences and a couple wordless shared moments. throughout, Quinn imbues Eric with wide-eyed vulnerability that helps to cut through sam’s reflexive prickliness. Nyong’o, a gifted gestural performer, makes space for flashes of compassion, toward both Eric and other strangers; an early, memorable scene finds sam using her body to cover two children from debris while guiding them toward the river.
the film includes the standard escalating horror set pieces — one occurs on fiery scaffolding, another inside a different flooded subway — that grow repetitive in their oscillating bouts of tension and release. but Nyong’o and Quinn manage to keep the film anchored in connection.
It helps that Frodo remains miraculously by the pair’s side, occasionally straying to hunt for food or water before returning to their company. He’s a good boy and a brave boy, but above all else, he is a consoling presence, lending Eric, sam, and the film — through silent moments and noisy ones — an unexpected, quiet grace.