A Quiet Place: Day One is about as good a movie as you will get from the third in a franchise.
Although the central storyline is patently ridiculous, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this personal look at the apocalypse.
Directed by Michael Sarnoski – best known for the excellent, if admittedly off-kilter Pig (2021) – Day One covers, unsurprisingly, the first day of the apocalypse.
In the A Quiet Place series of films, that means the arrival of impossibly strong but blind aliens, who hunt only by sound.
Even the slightest creak of a door or cough will tip the beasts off and have them hurtling towards the offending party.
So, then, it might strike you as odd that the characters we follow in this movie carry with them a live cat called Frodo.
As any pet owner would tell you, there is simply no chance of keeping an animal silent for a few minutes past mealtime, let alone under threat of imminent death in a Manhattan wasteland.
But somehow, the genuine love shown by main character Samira (Lupita Nyongo’o) towards the furry Frodo will have you buy in to the panic every time they are separated.
And aside from the story table-setting in the first half hour, Samira, Frodo and one other character are basically the only living non-aliens we spend time with in the movie.
That third character, Eric, is played with initial menace and later softness by Joseph Quinn, who finds great chemistry with Nyongo’o.
Together, the unlikely trio traipse through New York in the opposite direction to safety, all in search of a piece of pizza.
No, that is not a typo. The animating premise of Day One is an odyssey through hell to grab a bite of New York’s finest.
But as silly as that sounds, this movie is genuinely tense when it needs to be and affectingly well acted in the truly quiet moments when even the weather is silent.
And when focused on Sam and Eric joining forces for their common goal, Day One proves eminently watchable.
Rated 16 for Violence and Horror.
3.5/5.
Stay in the loop with The North Coast Courier on Facebook, X, Instagram & YouTube for the latest news.
Mobile users can join our WhatsApp Broadcast Service here or if you’re on desktop, scan the QR code below.
