A Quiet Place: Day 1 takes place before the events of the previous installments. This prequel with Lupita Nyong’o is set in New York and its pitch had already been mentioned in A Quiet Place 2 by a character present in both films. Did you spot it?
Warning, this article contains spoilers for “Quietly: Day 1” and “Quietly 2”.
Quietly: Day 1 is currently available at the cinema. Michael Sarnoski’s feature film takes place before the events of John Krasinski’s films, Quietly (2018) and Quietly 2 (20214).
This prequel by Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn and Alex Wolff takes place in New York on the first day of the alien invasion. A sick young woman finds herself stranded in New York as the creatures arrive. Everyone will have to learn the hard way the rules of survival in order to escape the monsters.
At the start of the film, Samira (Lupita Nyong’o) is in a palliative care center. His nurse (Alex Wolff) offers him a trip to the theater. Although reluctant, the latter finally agrees to go. In the theater room, she is seated with her cat on her knees behind a family made up of a couple and a little boy who keeps turning around to pet the cat. The father turns around to apologize.
Spectators of the first films then note that the latter is none other than Djimon Hounsou, a character already present in Without a sound 2. The latter appears several times in Day 1. It is he who explains to Samira that the creatures kill based on noise and takes care of the survivors in the theater. We will see him again at the end of the film on the boat responsible for evacuating New Yorkers.
Paramount
Without a sound! Day 1
The pitch for Day 1 was already in A Quiet Place 2
In the 2021 feature film, Djimon Hounsou appears after an hour of the film. He plays Henry, the leader of the colony that lives on an island and welcomes the young Millicent Simmonds and Cillian Murphy. The latter go to the island in order to be able to broadcast on the radio the ultrasound fatal to the creatures.
Henry explains that he has been on the island since the start of the attack and confides to Emmett (Cillian Murphy): “We were in the city when we heard the sirens wailing. When we saw that they couldn’t swim, the National Guard was ordered to get people onto every boat they could find. As soon as people saw that the first one had sailed away without any problems, there was a crowd movement. Everyone started pushing and people started screaming. There were a dozen boats ready to evacuate us in the harbor that day, only two were able to get out.” Note that a second character from Quietly 2 is also in the prequel: Henri’s son who appears at the end of the previous opus. Henri’s wife, however, does not appear in the 2021 film. We therefore do not know what happened to her.
Paramount
Without a sound 2
A character who makes the connection
In the press kit for Quietly: Day 1, the director Michael Sarnoski explain : “Henri is the key that connects the two worlds of the A Quiet Place franchise. In A Quiet Place 2, he tells the story of the day the aliens landed in New York. Henri was such a compelling character that I decided to bring him back. I always felt like there was something haunting Henri and now we’re learning what it was. Djimon did an incredible job in that scene. He brought so much intensity, while still being a warm and gentle person.”
For his part, Djimon Hounsou talks about his character: “When all hell breaks loose, he immediately recognizes that the way we live, the way we interact with each other, has to change radically. Michael was great to work with. He’s such a gifted storyteller.”.
And unlike A Quiet Place Part II, in which his character can speak since the island is isolated from the creatures, the actor had to remain silent for Day 1. He explains that he found communicating in silence exhausting. “It was actually much more difficult for me. I performed a scene so intense that I only had to repeat it several times to destroy myself.“
A Quiet Place: Day 1 is currently showing in theaters.
