A Quiet Place – Day 1prequel to the John Krasinski diptych, is a not very successful combination of horror and melodrama, in which the personal tragedy of a woman overshadows the clash with the ruthless predators who, this time, descend on New York. Lupita Nyong’o’s performance is excellent, but the one who steals the show is the cat.
The last day of my life
A gravely ill woman named Sam finds herself trapped in New York City during the early stages of an invasion by alien creatures with ultra-sensitive hearing. With her are her cat and Eric, a young man even more terrified than she is. [sinossi]
The initial ten minutes regarding the fateful event were not needed day one Of A Quiet Place II (2020) to avoid the creation of a real prequel. A prequel-spin-off, to be precise. The progenitor A Quiet Place he was taking action in medias res in an already destroyed world, whose few survivors are hiding in terror from monstrous blind alien predators with overdeveloped hearing. The result was a film built on silences and alternative forms of communication (sign language, which necessarily involved the use of on-screen subtitles: something unusual in American cinema). Somehow with A Quiet Place John Krasinski – actor and director –, together with his wife Emily Blunt, brought horror back, albeit without too much originality, to its zero degree: the silence and the scream, the darkness, the fear. Lethal hide and seek with the monster. With the second chapter, less organic and much more predictable than the previous one, the same team picked up exactly from the ending of the first – plus the insert of those ten minutes of background – adding an already superfluous piece to a saga with good tension, at times even compelling, but short of breath. In short, was it worth persisting? Probably not. But, as is known, the trend of the cinema industry has long been that of rebootof the “return to the scene of the crime”, with the aim of squeezing theidea that works, proposing it again and again under a new, however minimal, perspective. Which in the case of A Quiet Place – Day 1 is that of the apocalypse live, faced by a woman already condemned to death by cancer in its final stages, but who wants, at least, to choose how to die. The gradation therefore shifts towards personal tragedy, human drama. To give voice to the most intimate soul of this new episode, Michael Sarnoski is called to the helm, a young director from Milwaukee, who directed Nicolas Cage in another genre film (in that case a sort of action/revenge) always tainted with drama, that is Pig – Rob’s Plan (Pig, 2021). Sarnoski writes and directs, while Krasinski, the creator of the saga, simply produces. Unlike the first two films, which were predominantly rural, Day One is set entirely in New York, which obviously required a greater use of computer graphics: not only do we see many more creatures, darting between the roofs, already lowering themselves from the walls, or even infesting the subway tunnels, but also bridges that are blown up by the army, devastated skyscrapers, deserted streets with dizzying perspective vanishing points that tell of a world at the end of its days. The influence of The Last of Us (both the video game and the HBO series), is heard loud and clear. These scenes of pure visual spectacle are the most successful of the film and, if nothing else, will make fans of (post)apocalyptic scenarios happy. The worst, however, are the dialogue ones: too many jokes, hushed or not, that sssi would like to be heartbreaking and instead come across as banal, despite the splendid Lupita Nyong’o doing her utmost to give depth and dignity to her character.
One could force the reading of the film by asserting that the monstrous aliens, in this case, represent this woman’s personal demons, her struggle so that death finds her alive. What emerges is a sort of apocalyptic horror-melo, which on more than one occasion slips clumsily into the pathetic, which is not exactly a good thing for a product that should primarily arouse shivers in the public. In A Quiet Place – Day 1 the interludes of tension are brief, if compared to the long tearful interludes, during which the terminally ill Sam finds herself, against her will, taking care of a law student from Kent who suffers from panic attacks. Watching over the two unfortunates is the woman’s inseparable cat, with its silent and feline grace, like a spirit guide, a Maneki neko, the lucky cat of Japanese culture. A beautiful cat and, one might almost say, very good, who ends up stealing the scene from everyone, to the point that one begins to respect the animal trainer more than the director/screenwriter… Let’s be clear, the combination of horror and drama is certainly not forbidden, some examples are there to prove it: just think of the wonderful Martin (1977) by George A Romero. But it is a tricky mix to say the least and mastering it is not within everyone’s reach. Finally, an unintentionally comic note: in the previous chapter, Djimon Hounsou appeared in the role of a character thrown in there without any depth or history. Here he returns, but only to act as a bridge to the previous episode: for the rest, the treatment reserved for him is the same.
 Sarnoski – Review){kind=link}