It wasn’t at all easy to find your place within what is now, to all intents and purposes, a franchise. Especially when that place is fixed by the tracks of the prequel, which give you room to maneuver up to a certain point and don’t allow you to invent too much. Nevertheless Michael Sarnoski did it with A Quiet Place – Day 1truly a prequel that you do not expect, for how it approaches the saga created and launched by John Krasinski, remaining within its stylistic features but planting the seeds of its own cinema still very young, but which already manages to have a well-defined identity. With a film, in our theaters from June 27, that rewinds time and changes the space of the first two chapters, taking us to New York during the beginning of the alien invasion that changed the world forever. In the meantime, here’s everything you need to know about A Quiet Place – Day 1.
A Quiet Place – Day 1 and Mourning
A Quiet Place – Day 1 had all the makings of being an ordinary prequelan addition to the franchise which among other things expanded an element already seen at the beginning of the second chapter (the arrival of aliens on Earth) thus becoming a popcorn movie with horror tinges that is easy to read and absorb, perhaps with two hours and a half of aliens massacring human beings, filled with elements to then exploit for the future of the saga.
Instead Michael Sarnoski, director and screenwriter who takes over from John Krasinskichooses the “small” path already traced by A Quiet Place to tell the biggest possible story, that is, New York invaded by aliens. It does so by immediately focusing on the trauma and on an immediate mourning process, which leaves no room for phases and levels, bringing back the echoes of September 11th that still envelop the city in a fine dust that has never really settled. And in fact it is the character interpreted by Lupita Nyong’oSam, who is hit and soiled by trauma, just as has already happened to her, as she is terminally ill with cancer. A Quiet Place – Day 1 he therefore chooses his theme right away, inserting it into the invasion without ever losing his bearings.
The Quiet Place by Michael Sarnoski
After seeing A Quiet Place – Day 1 you can understand why the choice of Michael Sarnoski was not random, On the contrary. It was perhaps easier to opt for a “professional” filmmaker who would bring home the result with little effort, perhaps putting himself at the service of the public.
Instead, Sarnoski takes up practically all the themes of his splendid debut film (here is our review of Pig, which we highly recommend you catch up on Prime Video) and manages to insert them into a science fiction franchise. It starts from the mourning process and by a person, Sam, who no longer has any vital inspiration, whose spark is rekindled precisely in a tragedy that goes beyond human understanding. Next to her is Eric of a Joseph Quinn who is highlighting all its facets, for an actor who truly has a brilliant career ahead of him. Sam is disillusioned but wants to eat the last piece of her favorite pizza before she dies. Eric is lost and clings to her because he doesn’t know what else to do. And just like in Pigtwo deep solitudes mix together seeking the happiness of small things, even as the world is ending, world that can be as real as in A Quiet Place – Day 1 or the individual private universe of each person. Here, Michael Sarnoski knows how to work very well with people, tightening the camera on their faces, to then widen it on the objects that make up the environment, capable of lighting up when needed thanks to the eye of a director who has all the credentials to become an author.
A Quiet Place – Day 1 therefore uses the alien invasion as a metaphor for finding oneselfwithout skimping on the horror and tension part, but playing with the expectations of his own audience, just as he already did Pig, to tell the story of the little one of a slice of pizza inside the giant of the world that ends. And even if sometimes we seem to walk on the Earth without making any noise, like an almost apathetic cat in the face of what is happening, we just have to remember that we can enjoy the small and unthinkable things, as a liberating music in the face of the apocalypse.
