REVIEW: A Quiet Place

REVIEW: A Quiet Place - DAY ONE

I remember back when I reviewed A Quiet Place Part II, the thing that was on my mind a world crawling out of a global pandemic.

I now dive into Michael Sarnoski's newest take on the mythology with A Quiet Place: Day One having just this morning heard the news that a certain convicted felon is being granted immunity for his involvement in trying to overthrow democracy, and I am left wondering (not for the first time) what surviving in a world that already balances on borrowed time even means.

This is more or less the mindset of the film's protagonist, Sam, a terminally ill cancer patient who was already done with existing well before killer aliens started dropping out from the sky. The only things she cares about in the world are her "emotional support" cat, Frodo, and getting a taste of some proper New York pizza before this cancer takes her, alien invasion or not! While the rest of the city is running off to catch the last boat off Manhattan, she just digs deeper into the chaos. Her pizza quest puts her in the path of law-student and NYC visitor, Erik, who follows her if for no other reason than because he doesn't think a person like him has a chance at climbing out of the fire anyhow, so he might as well tag along. These two have nothing to offer one another except maybe a hand to hold at the end of the world.

The new talent here are absolutely worthy faces of this new branch of the "Quiet Place" tree, and the way they pull this off is by playing against their natural assets and/or most famous roles. Nyong'o's normal porcelain quality is entirely eroded here into something rough and resigned. Joseph Quinn, meanwhile, is timid, reserved, and all around the total opposite of Eddie Munson. He's the kind of person who, when not running from alien monsters, would probably be sitting in the back of the lecture hall where the professor couldn't see you even if you did dare to raise your hand. In concept, these two cast a wide net for the feelings one might feel in the face of the apocalypse, and in execution, they keep the audience grounded.

Djimon Hounsou's ill-fated character from the second movie is here as our connective tissue to Abbots and their adventures. But overall, this installment feels mindfully, deliberately different from Krasinski's films. Sam and Eric are allowed a few more opportunities for dialogue than the Abbots, and in this way they are allowed to have more textured personalities and histories, something that really carries them through our (presumably) single adventure with them. Even though this is the same band of aliens that we recognize from the first two films, here we face off against them en masse as opposed to one or two at a time, truly conveying the feeling of an alien invasion. That's nothing to say of Sarnoski's specific directorial flavor.

But these divergences only end up reinforcing the larger mythology of A Quiet Place. Stepping into someone else's head during this nightmare and revealing the humanity of some other member of society actually only reminds the viewer that wherever a person lands on the map during the apocalypse, and whatever the shape of their interior world, the common binding thread between all players in the horror landscape is the preciousness of life, in whatever capacity that exists. That deference to humanity was something that Krasinski's films were really good at, something that separated his films from most of the rest of the genre.

I don't yet know what that means for us and our monsters, except maybe that no life is too short or meaningless that it's not somehow sanctified in easing another's passage through the apocalypse.

--The Professor

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