A Quiet Place: Day One | Film Review

When New York City is faced with an alien invasion, citizens try to find a way to stay safe. Soon, they discover that the mysterious creatures hunt by sound.

I really liked the first Quiet Place movie, and really disliked the second one, so I was in two minds about seeing this film. Ultimately, though, I had high hopes that a prequel would be a good way to continue this unique story.

Unfortunately, while I liked this film more than the second, I didn't like it as much as I wanted to.

I had a lot more problems with the film than I had positive things, so I'll start with the positives.

It was filmed really well. There were some really beautiful, scenic shots that were really interesting.

The dialogue (and lack thereof) was done well. Because the characters could only speak in certain circumstances, it made their limited words hold a lot more weight and meaning.

As with all of the movies, the thing that stands out is the use of sound and silence. It especially works really well in this film, where we get to see the transition from sound to silence gradually.

Now, onto the problems.

The film gives us two characters to follow, played by Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn, and while both of the actors were great in their roles, I never cared about either of the characters.

There are times when the film tries to hit the same emotional beats as the first film, but because we know and care about these characters less, the emotional moments don't really work.

Everything happened way too quickly. It would have been nice to have a bit more time to live in this world before the invasion. And again, this might have helped to make us care more about the characters.

The ending was predictable and not as interesting as it could have been. 

The runtime also felt a bit odd. For me personally, I think it either needed to be a 30 minute short film, or it needed an extra 30 minutes to really develop the characters. As it stands, 90 minutes didn't work.

Overall, I didn't love this film as an addition to the Quiet Place franchise. I can see the potential for the premise to be done again, to show how the invasion began in other cities/countries, and I would be interested to see this again with more engaging characters. But for this film, I just wasn't interested enough to really care.

5/10