Set in a world where a race of blind but super-hearing aliens hunt humans, the first two films offered muted apocalyptic horror through the experience of the Abbot family surviving in rural, upstate New York. In ‘A Quiet Place; Day One’ (2024), the horror goes back to the beginning. Set in New York City and starring Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn, the prequel gives audiences an idea of how vulnerable New Yorkers may be to super hearing aliens as an intertitle explains that the city’s famous buzz is approximately 90 decibels – equal to the sound of a constant scream.
Swapping the intimacy the Abbot family for the unpredictability of strangers, ‘Day One’ introduces Sam (Nyong’o), a terminally ill poet on a day out from hospice with her cat Frodo. Reluctant to go on the puppet theatre excursion, Sam is enticed by a nurse named Reuben (Alex Wolff) who promises they can go for pizza afterwards. In the city, chaos soon breaks loose as what look like meteors streak across the sky.
Minutes later, New York is engulfed in smoke, ash and debris from impact, and the newly landed aliens begin killing everyone within earshot. At this point, ‘Day One’, written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, plays like many apocalyptic films you’ve seen before. People run, they scream, they’re flung off screen or plucked up by a seemingly invisible force as life as they know it implodes beyond recognition.
Dusty scenes reminiscent of 9/11 are particularly harrowing and Nyong’o, .
