When Richard Brody of The New Yorker (perhaps unfairly) excoriated John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place back when the first installment hit theaters in 2018 for its white guy survivalist fantasies – you know, rugged man-of-the-woods defends his family from the forces daring to intrude upon their land, living in fear and paranoia and all that – it seemed as if that film would be a one-off. But since Krasinski’s film was a splash hit, it spawned an unlikely franchise, given that the leading man died at the end of the first one and, let’s be real, the concept for these movies evaporates when agitated and enlarged like a thinly stretched puddle of water on a hot day. Yet, in super-sizing this world, it’s admirable that Krasinski and his team listened to that feedback and tried to expand their purview.
Michael Sarnoski’s A Quiet Place: Day One dramatically changes up the formula in that key aspect: It’s set in Manhattan on the day that the walking hearing aids fell from the sky and a black woman, played by Lupita Nyong’o, as she makes her way across the city to fulfill a single, albeit difficult-to-explain, goal before time runs out. There’s a clumsiness (for example, Manhattan’s geography is… odd, given that our characters have to make their way some 60-odd blocks from 59th and Lexington on the East Side to what I’m assuming is a stand-in for one of the jazz clubs in West Harlem) that suggests that line of criticism had a hair-raising impact on the production’s ethos. Still, the attempt is somewhat commendable: At least it’s no longer just a white dude’s fantasy of ensuring survival at all costs in the woods, and what that fantasy is now is up to the viewer to decide, given that there may be some measure of controversy about Nyong’o’s arc in the film.
What Day One is, more than anything else, is treacly. Sarnoski’s Pig was an excellent debut, a gentle and sad film that boasted an incredible Nic Cage performance and a bitter edge that offset some of its more saccharine tones, and he was always a strange choice for a big-budget project like this. But when you watch Day One, it’s clear that Krasinski, who has a co-story credit here, saw Pig as an arthouse echo of Some Good News: The bright spots amid all of the darkness, the depression of the moment forgotten, an idealistic love remembered, and an underground Portland back-of-house fight club joined (well, maybe not that last part). But for every grace note that the director can find in all of the chaos, and despite the great efforts of his two leads, you can’t shake the feeling that you’re watching what might have happened if the stories in a Chicken Soup for the Soul book gravitated towards the realm of creepypasta. It’s less concerned with thrilling you, and more concerned with making you cry unexpected tears both of anguish and relief, which is a strange value proposition given the roller-coaster nature of the original film. Imagine Superman: The Ride slamming on the brakes during one of the descents in order to make the riders watch one of those morbidly sentimental Vietnamese life insurance commercials before they can resume, and you’ll approximate what an audience will feel when they head out to the multiplex this weekend. One look at the ingredient list, and you’ll see that it’s got way too much sugar to be palatable.
We open in what looks like a nursing home or a mental hospital outside of NYC, where Samira (Nyong’o) is participating in group therapy. She hates this place and reads a poem saying as much to the assembled crowd, with her group leader (Alex Wolff) gently chiding her for making a vaguely mean joke at the expense of one of her fellow patients. When she returns to her room, we get a better picture of what’s happening with her: She peels off a Fentanyl patch and replaces it with a fresh one as she prepares herself (and her therapy cat, Frodo) for a little jaunt into the city. A group of her fellow patients is going to a puppet show, and all she wants to do is head back to Harlem and get a slice of pizza. As they drive away in a school bus, we get full confirmation: this is a hospice center, and Samira is dying of cancer. The marionette performance is exactly how you’d imagine it to be – depressing in a way that no person on Earth would want to bring their kids to, even though the audience is stacked with them – and Samira heads outside to grab a drink. It’s then that we start to notice all of the weird things happening in Midtown. Military Humvees are speeding through the streets, fighter jets are maneuvering in the sky, and something feels wrong. And, once it’s time to get back on the bus, shit truly hits the fan: meteors begin to fall from the sky, filled with powerful, predatory creatures that have incredible hearing. The impact from one of the objects blows out the windows on the bus and briefly knocks Samira out.
When she wakes up, she finds herself in a low-rent version of Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, with all of the immediacy and meta-commentary stripped from it. Ash and debris are everywhere, and people are getting picked off left and right by the aliens around them. Somehow, Samira’s able to make it safely inside the theater, where a throng of survivors (including Djimon Hounsou from Part II) are gathered. But she knows that she won’t be able to stay there for long – this was a one-way ticket for her, and besides, all of the bridges have been destroyed, and there’s absolutely no point in trying to flee to the evacuation point at the South Street Seaport, given that a massive throng of devastated, shell-shocked people (another bit of 9/11 imagery lifted here) walking in unison is practically an all-you-can-eat buffet for these aliens. So, she tries to make her way up north, to get what might be the last slice of pizza ever served in New York City, to try and potentially appreciate life one last time before the end. It’s on her quest that she meets Eric (Joseph Quinn), an English law school student who was caught in the subway system when the invasion occurred and somehow managed to survive even after the tunnel flooded. Traumatized by what he’s been through, he begins following Samira and Frodo almost as if he were hypnotized, and Samira is, at first, extremely frustrated by this. He doesn’t know she’s going back up there to die, and she doesn’t want to be responsible for his needless death, but as he begins to come around, she starts to realize that he wants to help her achieve his goal – potentially to do one last good thing himself before he inevitably meets his end from an invader’s claw.
So, you can probably trace the outcome here if you remember enough detail from Part II (I didn’t, because that movie immediately deleted itself from my memory banks as soon as I walked out of the theater). You can probably see what dish this recipe makes and already feel your teeth hurt. This isn’t a knock on Nyong’o or Quinn, who both turn in great work, per usual, and who manage to sync up with the moments of properly earned sentiment. Hell, I nearly cried during Quinn’s introduction – he emerges from the flooded subway at the top of one of the stairwells, and as he’s getting his bearings, processing the unimaginable shit he just went through, he looks up and sees the cat and nearly short circuits. This beautiful, kind-seeming, and serene creature is peering at him through the handrail fencing, purring at him, and even though he’s already drenched, you can see the tears start to pour down his face. These precious moments are overwhelmed by everything around else – the scenes that demand that you feel empathy, as empty as they are, and the action, which doesn’t take as much advantage of the new setting, leaving both the environment and the vastly-expanded nature of its potential ensemble on the table. It is competently staged, and Sarnoski was able to make the transition to blockbuster filmmaking without totally fumbling on the fundamentals, but it’s never quite as thrilling as it should be when you’re hearing the string section, or watching them contrive another way for our leads to have a conversation (with as much as these two talk, you’d be astonished that they even bothered with the super-hearing creatures).
Yet A Quiet Place: Day One is notable for one key reason: It’s a Hollywood disaster movie set in New York, which are rare enough creatures these days, with even Roland Emmerich shying away from it in recent years as a spot for macabre fun. The few that have made it out have been deliberately pointed in their application of real-world imagery, and perhaps this represents a “return to normalcy” that should be expected now that 22 years have passed. Yet War of the Worlds remains the operative comparison here, given its transition from large-scale disaster imagery to intimacy, rather than something like Cloverfield, which took full advantage of its NYC setting on fronts both cinematic and thematic. In lifting Spielberg’s aesthetic and little else, Sarnoski falls into the trap that so many accused The Beard of when that movie premiered back in 2005. Given its proximity to Iraq and the stakes held by folks on these particular shores, one couldn’t see it for the proper critique of imperialism that Wells intended and that Spielberg properly translated to screen – a tale of the lucky ones who managed to flee to safety in the face of a resource-hungry invading force – and how that implication undercuts the fantastical nature of the happy ending.
There’s nothing of the sort here, which is why the saccharine nature of the film’s dynamic is so prominent in the flavor profile. And this is why Brody’s criticism, as interesting and as insightful as it is, always fell somewhat short for me as a complete summation: The isolated nature of the first film enabled its concepts to work in an entertaining distraction-free way, even if it were a survivalist fantasy crafted to ensure its impact. When the important attributes are translated to different environments or with another ensemble, it loses key components (ASL as a form of efficient communication) or short-circuits the suspension of disbelief. Reminder: these monsters, for whatever reason, cannot swim, so a landlocked environment is pretty ideal for the scenario to work. And despite Sarnoski and Krasinski’s successful attempt to expand the diversity of its ensemble, A Quiet Place: Day One fails at expanding the possibilities of the concept beyond presenting it in its most maudlin form.