A Quiet Place: Day One
Director: Michael Sarnoski
Writer: Michael Sarnoski, John Krasinski
Prequel to: A Quiet Place, A Quiet Place Part II
Cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsou, Eliane Umuhire, Takunda Khumalo, Alfie Todd, Avy Berry
Seen on: 13.6.2026

Plot:
Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) is settled into a hospice just outside of New York, basically waiting to die, with her cat Frodo her closest companion. When her nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff) convinces her to go to New York for a show, Sam only accepts for the promise of a slice of Patsy’s pizza after the show. But before they can get there, aliens attack New York, and chaos breaks lose. People soon learn that the aliens attack sound, but how could anyone stay quiet under the circumstances?

A Quiet Place: Day One is not a bad film, but neither is it particularly good. It certainly didn’t work as well for me as the first two films, despite Nyong’o. But I have definitely seen worse.

By now we all know that a successful genre film will almost certainly get sequels, prequels and spin-off and will be milked for all it is worth and more, with usually decreasing quality the longer it goes on. A Quiet Place: Day One may not be better than the first film, but neither feels it like just a money-grab. That is mostly thanks to Lupita Nyong’o who carries most of the film together with the cat and brings some real emotions to the screen (Hounsou does, too, as usual, but, also as usual, he is criminally underused).

Joseph Quinn, whose Eric enters the film a little later, gives a good performance as well, and the two of them together are definitely fun to watch, although I have to admit a certain frustration that we needed another film with a white dude front and center. Especially since it was pretty obvious from the get-go, with Sam’s terminal illness, that she would be sacrificing herself for him. And she did. I don’t think that the film would have been any less engaging if it had been about Sam’s survival – so she could really die on her own terms. Of course, from a character perspective, her choosing to sacrifice herself is setting the terms of her own death, but on a meta level it’s a Black death made useful for a white man and it feels very uncomfortable.

At least that part is interesting to think about, though. The action sequences were less interesting, I’m afraid, and I found myself tuning out of the film the longer it and they went on. They lacked tension and clarity: I never knew exactly what was happening where, but it didn’t matter all that much to me. Since they make up a large part of the film, though, that is a bit of a problem.

That being said, it wasn’t so bad that it derailed the entire film for me. I was still invested and engaged, and didn’t mind watching it. But I also don’t regret seeing it at home and not at the cinema where I’d have to spend extra money on it. In any case, it might be a good time to put a pin in this burgeoning franchise.

Summarizing: it’s fine.