The director finds more than one way to keep the formula alive, and above all to legitimize its continuity, even within a more muscular and much less suggestive staging.
The risk of repetition is present at many turning points in A Quiet Place: Day Onea prequel whose basic concept has already been particularly well exploited by John Krasinski in two feature films. Above all, images of New York City in ruins following some cataclysmic event have become more commonplace these days than those of a Big Apple vibrating with life.
We are barely exaggerating…
Having taken over the reins for this new tour of the track taking us to the origin of the invasion orchestrated by a horde of aliens with deficient eyesight but very developed hearing, Michael Sarnoski (who gave us the excellent Pig in 2021), already begins with the good idea of transposing this scenario based on the need for absolute silence in the streets and buildings of one of the noisiest metropolises there is.
We are first introduced to Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), a woman in a long battle with illness in which every day could be her last.
During a rare city break, the ex-writer finds herself in the heart of the chaos and destruction wreaked by the voracious creatures with which we are already familiar. While rescue operations are being organized, Samira is determined to stay in town to enjoy one last time one of her little pleasures in life before passing away.
Samira’s path crosses at a certain point with that of Eric (Joseph Quinn), a British law student who decides to follow her, having nowhere to go and no one to find. During their discussions, Eric decides to help his new friend realize her ultimate wish, and the duo embarks on a dangerous journey to Harlem.
Krasinski and Sarnoski clearly hold the remarkable adaptation of War of the Worlds that Steven Spielberg offered us almost twenty years ago. A Quiet Place: Day One takes up much the same dynamic of the war story told from the perspective of ordinary citizens with considerable force and eloquence in terms of staging, and marked empathy for its characters.
If the specter of September 11 is never far away in all these images of streets disappearing under a thick cloud of gray smoke and ashes, that of civil helplessness at the heart of any armed conflict is particularly felt when the survivors are called to go to a dock to leave the city, coming out of their hiding place one by one to form a mass whose movements quickly raise the number of decibels.
And A Quiet Place: Day One is full of stressful sequences, exploiting well the objective of having to remain silent in a city that is usually incapable of it, what is most interesting is the complicity between the two protagonists, and the way in which they rely on each other to rise up and help each other to defy their condition to get through this unimaginable scenario.
It is in these moments of great humanity that Michael Sarnoski’s film finds its most significant breath, carried by two actors whose chemistry works perfectly, leading to several particularly touching scenes in the last act.
Au final, A Quiet Place: Day One accomplishes exactly the tasks that were entrusted to it, continuing what the previous installments were able to establish by focusing first and foremost on the characters, their resourcefulness, their sensitivity, their regard for others and their intrinsic goodness in a scenario where everything already seems lost.
The filmmaker thus finds more than one way to keep the formula alive, and above all to legitimize its continuity, even within a more muscular and much less suggestive staging.
We also have to give huge points for the cat with the anything but innocuous name of Frodo, who steals the show in each of his appearances, and which Sarnoski uses as the string allowing him to unite and connect the main elements of his story .
 – Review – The Last Words){kind=link}