The horror prequel is arresting but lacks in tension and scares
Following a transition to an era where it has become fashionable to dunk on John Krasinski for getting too famous and daring to become an action star, there has been a retroactive dismissal of A Quiet Place in some online film circles. As I mentioned in my IF review, I'm not some die-hard Office fan weeping into my pillow about how unfairly the internet has been treating my favourite millionaire, but I do think that with A Quiet Place and its sequel, Krasinski proved himself to be an impressive artistic force with a keen eye for horror and sharply realised family dynamics.
From taking a script he liked and rewriting it, to casting himself and his wife in the leading roles, Krasinski very much made A Quiet Place his own franchise, and not something that I thought could easily be picked up by another director who risked not having as much to say as Krasinski did.
That said, the premise of A Quiet Place is so perfectly ripe for spin-offs, it was inevitable that somebody else would take up the franchise now that Krasinski has seemingly set it aside. Writer/director Michael Sarnoski seemed like a solid choice after Pig, but he was only stepping in after Jeff Nichols left the project for The Bikeriders. The real challenge of Day One then was seeing if it could feel distinct from Krasinski's original movies while working within his framework.
What Would You Do For A New York Slice?
When Sam (Lupita Nyong'o), a terminally ill and stubbornly independent cancer patient survives the initial wave of an extraterrestrial attack, she sets out to find a slice of pizza in an alien-infested, disaster-struck New York with the aid of her cat and random-guy-she-bumps-into, Eric (Joseph Quinn).
If you're reading that logline and are confused about how important pizza is to the plot, you wouldn't be the only one. Sam's quest for pizza was left out of the marketing, probably for the best; it reads as silly on the surface. Indeed, the movie lost me for a few minutes at the beginning of the second act; I'd dismissed her desire for pizza as a joke, and didn't realise that yes, Sam's goal really is to find a New York Slice.
Of course it's not JUST about pizza for Sam. She is, after all, dying. I think where Day One really excels is in its exploration of what death, survival, and living means in the apocalypse, especially from the perspective of someone with a unique relationship with death. Long-term, Sam has no prospects. Is survival and pleasure and friendship even worth it if you know it won't last?
The Sound of Silence
Where Day One falters for me is in how little interest the movie has in playing with sound and silence. New York City should've been a playground for this kind of stuff, but a side-effect of this taking place on the first day of the invasion--unlike the other two movies--is that nobody has a clue what's going on. It turns the movie into a smash-n'-grab thrill ride, as opposed to the previous entries which focused on creative plans and strategies for surviving with the aliens, all while building tension to a breaking point.
Day One is still fun, but ultimately the movie isn't tense or scary enough and sometimes feels a little low-stakes. How much this affects your enjoyment of Day One depends on how much you were expecting it to feel like the films came before it. Perhaps it's unfair of me to just want the same thing as before, but I remember holding my breath while Emily Blunt was forced to give birth in a bathtub while an alien stalked her home, and I wanted to feel that again.
It also waits far too long to introduce Eric, played by Joseph Quinn. The development of his relationship with Sam becomes the core of the movie, but it feels a little rushed at times. The movie is only a little over ninety minutes long, and I think it could've done with more Joseph Quinn, especially at the beginning. I wanted to feel his arc as much as I did Sam's.
That said, when their relationship works it really works. It's easy to get invested in the evolution of their relationship. I wanted them to bond. Watching people act completely selflessly in the face of random cruelty is heartening, and even though the friendship between these two characters never quite reaches the heights of the family dynamics in the previous movies, I found it to be quite moving at times.
Conclusion
Day One is a good movie that struggles mostly in comparion to its predecessors but does manage to successfully set itself apart from them by focusing on unique relationship (I'm sure some executive wanted them to just make a movie about another family at some point in development). When it's working, you'll be glad to be watching it, and even when it's struggling you're unlikely to be bored.
***
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