A Quiet Place: Day One

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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As you will recall, “A Quiet Place,” the 2018 post-apocalyptic monster movie directed by John Krasinski, began in the middle of the story. The countryside was already infested with blind extraterrestrial creatures with an acute sense of hearing. One had to be very very quiet to avoid certain death from their deadly teeth.

The original film was followed by “A Quiet Place Part II.” Here, we got a preview of how these extraterrestrial monsters arrived on earth in a meteor and set about slaughtering people.

Now, we have a third outing, this one a “spinoff prequel” called “A Quiet Place: Day One.” As the title suggests, this new entry “takes the action back to the first day of the invasion when we find out exactly how the world went quiet.” The storyline takes place before the first film, where a woman named Sam must survive an invasion in New York City by these bloodthirsty alien creatures with ultrasonic hearing.

In the first two films, we followed the survival efforts of the Abbott family (played by John Krasinski and his wife Emily Blunt, with the support of Millicent Simmons, Noah Jupe, and Cade Woodward) on their farm in the northern woods of New York State.

In this one, we follow the survival efforts of Samari (Lupita Nyong’o) and her allies (Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff, and Eliane Umuhire) in an urban setting.
Djimon Hounsou reprises his role of Henri, providing linkage between the films.

Indie filmmaker Michael Sarnoski takes over as director, based on his strong handling of the film “Pig” (2021). John Krasinski remains on board as a producer and co-writer.

Lupita Nyong’o says the most exciting part of the movie for her was “finding out how to communicate messages without words.” She points out that “even the smallest gesture of body language could change the context of the entire scene, so each scene required much internalizing.”

Nyong’o continues, “What I love about this whole franchise is that in this alien invasion story, there are so many opportunities to follow different people on day one itself. We narrow in on these two characters, but there’s how many billion people in the world? This franchise could go on forever!”

Meanwhile, as proof of her words, a sequel – “A Quiet Place III” – is said to be in the works.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com