"A Quiet Place: Day One" Has Many Scares (But No Soul)

Title: A Quiet Place: Day One Director: Michael Sarnoski Studio: Paramount Pictures Genre(s): Horror Rated: PG-13 (For terror and violent content/bloody images)

“A Quiet Place: Day One” is the latest installment in what has now become a highly lucrative franchise for Paramount Pictures (who I’m sure could use a few hits these days). It takes place on the first day of the invasion that caused the wasteland that we see in the other two movies. The Abbott family is nowhere to be seen here, but some minor characters from the second film return to provide a sense of continuity. The film continues the tradition of creating fear out of nothing and for those looking for some genuine scares, the film will work. However, I found the experience to feel pointless.

While I am not opposed to going back to the day of the invasion and exploring that in feature film form, the issue comes with the fact that by the end of the movie, we understand the creatures no more than we did before. We learn so little about the invaders that eventually we feel like we are just passengers being led along a path that is going to have things jump out at us for cheap scares. Seeing that jump cares do not tell emotionally radiant stories, we have to look to our protagonists for that.

However, with our lead protagonist Samira (Lupita Nyong’o, acting her butt off in a movie that is putting out less effort than her) beginning the film with cancer, her chances of survival seem slim. Her traveling companion Eric (Joseph Quinn) is in a better position to survive, but seeing that the movie doesn’t give him much to do other than develop a friendship with Samira, I found that I didn’t much care if he survived. Honestly, I think more people are going to be invested in whether or not the cat survives than the humans. 

All that being said, “A Quiet Place: Day One” still offers genuine suspense and scares, which was the brilliance of the original films to begin with. Those who don’t care about the people and get more excitement by waiting in anticipation for where the invaders will pop up are likely to have just as good a time this time around as they have the previous two. It’s only stuck-up people like me who demand more from our movies that this will seem pointless. In terms of sheer terror and thrills, “A Quiet Place: Day One” delivers in spades. For world-building and deep character development…eh, not so much.