Home to over 8 million people, New York City is a loud place.  When aliens with receptors that are hypersensitive to sound crash land in Manhattan, the bustling city quiets down to a whisper because any noise makes one the next target for attack.  Through the quiet destruction, Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) and her cat, Frodo, make their way across town for one last slice of pizza from Patsy’s. 

Michael Sarnoski takes the reins from John Krasinski with A Quiet Place: Day One, a prequel to the post-apocalyptic sci-fi films which marked a blockbuster turn for Krasinski back in 2018.  This 100-minute, third installment was similarly released by Paramount Pictures, but it transports the action from Middle America to the coast which allows us to see the alien creatures navigate a new environment.  Sarnoski also finds ways to weave the human experience into the film, but despite Krasinski’s involvement in breaking the story, Day One is missing the same propulsive heartbeat that drew us to the franchise in the first place.   

It is not entirely fair to place the burden of the franchise on the film as it is taking a massive pivot from where A Quite Place: Part II (2021) left off, and Sarnoski does deliver an engaging and suspenseful film, but because of its association to the larger story, it must be considered.  Unfortunately, there is very little new ground covered in this film despite the location and character shift.  We are already intimately familiar with these aliens and we know their weaknesses, so while Sarnoski’s script is smart enough to not spend too much time for the recently displaced residents of New York City to learn the ins and outs of the world that we already came prepared with, the result feels like they, too, already know everything they need despite the creatures having crash landed only hours before.  It is a common struggle that many prequels face having to mine deeper into an existing story to find something that is consequential enough to stand on its own, even though it may or may not exist in the text of the initial installment.   

Gareth Edwards‘ Rouge One: A Star Wars Story (2016) toes the line quite well, but Day One seems more akin to Dan Trachtenberg’s 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) in that it wants to exist in the same universe but follows a totally separate cast of characters that would not have any interaction with the family we followed in the first two films.  It is a wise move, but everything we see in Day One, we saw already and in a more exciting way.  Emily Blunt’s Evelyn stepping on the nail is a far more thrilling moment than when Sam’s foot gets stuck under the car.  Krasinki’s Lee telling his son, Marcus (Noah Jupe), that he will be responsible for the family soon next to the waterfall is a far more poignant moment than when Sam steps under the fountain to comfort two young brothers.  Even a trip to the pharmacy, while the outcome is exciting here, feels like Sarnoski is merely following in the same footsteps of Krasinisk’s installments. 

The most unfortunate parallel between the films, though, is Sam’s terminal diagnosis.  It recalls Regan’s (Millicent Simmonds) deafness from the first two films, but her deafness is also utilized in the plot as her implants were able to emit a tone that would force back the aliens.  Here, Sam’s cancer seems more like a narrative crutch that limits her abilities and instead of Sarnoski using it to boost her up, it gives her a streak of devil-may-care nihilism. Sure, this creates some poetry in the ending, but feels obtuse in its execution. 

To focus on the film and what we do see, separate from what came before, Sarnoski delivers a well thought out and constructed film that should be recognized and celebrated.  He, along with cinematographer Pat Scola, create some really striking and effective imagery that serves both the action plot and the emotional arcs of the film.  One comes early on in the film when Sam and the rest of the hospice patients are at a marionette theatre to see a show.  A shy puppet boy emerges from his case and blows up a balloon, bigger and bigger, so big that he begins to float until the balloon pops with a bang and he comes crashing down.  Later, Scola’s lens captures the intentional bombing of the Manhattan bridges, isolating the city in an attempt to keep the creatures contained.  It is a frightening sequence in its implications and strikes an emotional chord in audiences more so than any of the jump scares or other creature moments will.  Horror in general, and Day One is no exception, is at its best when it can focus on the human elements of the story; how does life continue in unimaginable circumstances.  This is proven in a bravado sequence – or, at least as bravado as one can get when the characters cannot make a sound – in which Eric (Joseph Quinn), a fellow survivor whom Sam has unwittingly teamed up with, performs a magic trick with Sam as his audience volunteer and the imaginary crowd cheers on in excitement and awe.   

There are regrettably few moments, however, for the actual audience in the cinema to cheer.  On one hand, it is nice that Day One holds to its breezy runtime, not overstaying its welcome and giving fans of thrillers or the franchise the hit they are looking for, but on the other, it tends to rush by everything that makes it interesting.  As mentioned earlier, there is another pharmacy trip in this installment, but while Eric is on his way back is when the film has a truly exciting but wholly underutilized sequence.  The aliens have infiltrated a power plant and pillars of fire pierce the sky. Sarnoski builds some tension in the moment – Eric had to chase after Frodo who had followed him to the pharmacy – but the scene ultimately leads nowhere. It is empty like so much else in the film, afraid to spend too long in one place despite the world-building that desperately calls for it. It is hard to build character moments in the traditional sense when the whole conceit of the film is that they must remain quiet, but looking just a few weeks prior to this film’s release, we have already seen massive and also largely silent, action sequences in George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024). The quick in-and-out pacing here makes the film feel like it is too scared or too thin to tell the whole story. They are two very different films with very different goals, sure, but it is proof that it can be done and be engrossing; simply put Day One lacks the inspiration. 

Sometimes returning to the well proves a more difficult task than creating something new, and Day One tries to inject a sense of new into something tried and true. It has to work up to the events we already know, and for those who are not acquainted with Krasinski’s duology, they will find this world pretty thin given all we are allowed to explore and offering little to sink their teeth into. Wandering around the desolate streets, often chasing after Frodo, offers an unsettling look at an apocalyptic dawn; images that may be most upsetting in the memories they evoke of empty city streets circa the spring and summer of 2020. In a way, that association almost leans into the greater lore of the franchise – a world where isolation is key to survival – but however one views the film, either a morphed allegory for crisis as many disaster films can be, or a series that highlights and celebrates our differences, Day One is just far too conventional despite its aspirations. Sarnoski is not working in the scale of something like Independence Day (1996), but it is a leap too far from his feature debut, Pig (2020), and the wider scope gets the better of him.