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A Quiet Place – Day 1 from today it arrives in theaters, bringing back the saga which, which began in 2018 thanks to John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, had brought the post-apocalyptic and sci-fi horror genre back to life, garnering unanimous acclaim from the public and critics. After the second episode, released in 2021, now it’s the turn of the prequel/spinoff, directed by Michael Sarnoski, with Krasinski and Michael Bay producing. The final result is certainly pleasant in various sequences and moments, however, despite Lupita Nyong’O’s skill, it lacks a real ability to amaze, above all it lacks originality and the ability to go beyond the homework, to imitate others slavishly or almost two episodes, without bringing any particular news.
A Quiet Place – Day 1, the plot
A Quiet Place – Day 1 takes us to the beginnings of the invasion of the so-called “Angels of Death”, the terrifying and bloodthirsty aliens who in the first A Quiet Place we understood that we had reduced the Earth into a sort of gigantic charnel house. Equipped with fearful strength, extremely ferocious, with apparently indestructible armor, they had forced the few survivors to embrace a life where silence was the only weapon to survive. Their arrival on Earth, aboard the remains of their planet, here coincides with a trip that Reuben (Alex Wolff), a nurse, has prepared for his patients, almost all of whom are cancer patients. Among these, the one with whom he has a closest relationship is Sam (Lupita Nyong’o), who, armed with cynicism, a sense of humor and the inseparable cat Frodo, follows him to the Big Apple, to attend a theater show together with the others . Within a short time, however, aliens begin to appear in droves on the streets of the city, bringing death and terror everywhere. Sam, who constantly needs drugs and painkillers, will begin a fight for survival which will become, thanks to the fortuitous meeting with Erico (Joseph Quinn), a chance to rediscover what she liked about life, make peace with her condition, while everything around her death, destruction and panic besiege everyone and the city becomes a gigantic open-air slaughterhouse.
A Quiet Place – Day 1 from the beginning it shows that it does not want to move away an inch from what the two previous episodes had been, of which it imitates the narrative nature of a micro story in the most absolute sense, its identity of a personal odyssey within a world catastrophe, experienced through the eyes of a protagonist, to whom Lupita Nyong’o knows how to give a very deep humanity, verisimilitude, realism. In her we certainly have the most convincing part of a film that however, after an encouraging start and also visually of great impact, begins to slip perhaps a little too much into the sentimental, into the melodrama even, to go round in circles as if it did not know how to evolve. This is by virtue of Sarnoski’s writing, which appears in several points undecided whether to be, as in the two previous films, a list of terrifying sequences, or also to devote itself to the metaphorical, in becoming a symbol of the absence of silence and listening in our present. This prequel/spin-off, in short, is a film that shows its cards right from the start, and they are honest cards, they are also humble from certain points of view, but it was legitimate to expect a change of pace, perhaps something that recalls all the excellent ideas seen in films likeand World War Zin short, it was time to offer something different, instead of showing us well or always the usual atmosphere and the usual scenes, which from the middle onwards simply stop scaring the viewer or giving even the slightest emotion.
An enjoyable film but lacking the necessary audacity
A Quiet Place – Day 1 he also makes the mistake of not using the city in his background in sufficient depth: New York. The Big Apple has always been the favorite cinematic stage for every alien invasion and catastrophe that can be remembered, and it would have a lot, a lot to give here too. Just think about Cloverfield, another saga that has shaped the history of post-apocalyptic sci-fi for better or worse. Instead, in this film we remain following the trail of this woman, desperate and at the same time endowed with a feral determination, with a survival instinct unique to her kind, but weighed down by a diegetic process that appears at certain moments to be all too elementary. The same goes for the evolution of her personality in relation to Eric’s, and also the way in which the two give each other moments of understanding and tenderness, honestly appears to be a very little successful or rich level of global conception. In the end, the truly most original thing is to use the cat, Frodo, as a sort of Dante’s guide, a feline lookalike of Virgil, who however in turn becomes a deus ex machina of events, as well as the symbol of hope, of possible ways out of a catastrophe throughout the film. A Quiet Place – Day 1 it then shows us only partial truths and specifies very little about the aliens themselves, again terrifying, whose characteristics and origins remain unknown to us. In short A Quiet Place – Day 1 it is not a film that even from this point of view knows how to do without the first two, objectively far superior, chapters of the saga.
A Quiet Place – Day 1 it naturally connects kind of like War of the Worlds, to the concept of normality that sinks into chaos and horror, to this elsewhere that falls upon us, leaving our entire civilization and all points of reference in crumbs. If at least in this film the protagonists do not indulge in macroscopic errors contrary to all logic and intelligence, it is also true that in the final A Quiet Place – Day 1 it becomes incredibly predictable, almost corny, it forgets to give us what we wanted: the macro dimension of this terrifying invasion which, as we understood in the previous films, is not stopped or hindered in the slightest by humanity. If there’s one thing a movie is like Independence Day has made us understand, is that only by giving the global dimension of this tragedy, or by starting from the personal dimension and then broadening the gaze as a masterpiece like 28 Days Later, the deepest emotional chords of the audience are touched. Which of course doesn’t mean that the intimate approach chosen by John Krasinski in the two previous episodes was wrong, in fact it was the most incredible part of the film, but repeating it for the third time in a row gives the impression that this third chapter of the saga is nothing It’s nothing more than a derivative work, with a very attractive name as bait. However, it remains a well shot film, the special effects are very good, the “Angels of Death” continue to be among the most evil and successful aliens of the genre. The final judgment, however, tells us that perhaps it is time to start exploring the possibility of a television series, or if you want to continue the saga at the cinema, stop repeating the same music over and over again.
Rating: 6
