Highly anticipated, to the point that the Tribeca Film Festival, despite having ended a week ago, organized a special preview screening in New York on the evening of June 26th: A Quiet Place – Day 1 finally arrives at the cinema. For two years the prequel to the saga of John Krasinski saw its release date postponed, but arrives in theaters on June 27th in Italy and on the 28th in the United States, with a great pair of protagonists, Lupita Nyong’o e Joseph Quinn.
The setting in New York is fundamental, as already explained at the beginning of the film. A city so chaotic that it has noise pollution equal to an “incessant scream”, 90 decibels. The moment the frightening alien creatures of the saga arrive on earth, however, there is no longer room for that scream. It is silence that must be imposed in order to survive.
A Quiet Place – Day 1: where were we
A Quiet Place – Day 1, therefore, is in all respects a prequel. It tells the exact moment of the arrival of the monsters with ultra-sensitive hearing, and more. It also explains the history of the colony of survivors on the islands, already seen in the second chapter, and among these it is easy to identify immediately Djimon Hounsouwho reprises his role in the saga.
However, this is not a film that is difficult to understand outside the context of the two previous titles, unfortunately far from it. It is punctuated by some “obligatory passages” in the script, not to mention predictable elements. The story is that of Sam (Nyong’o), an African American who lived between the music of Harlem and the poetry and art of Lower Manhattan. She is already condemned to death by an aggressive cancer that makes her dependent on Fentanyl to try to drown out every pain in her body. Sam no longer wants to live, that’s clear. She just remains to understand how she will choose to die.
During the siege of New York, she is briefly joined by Eric (Quinn), an English boy and law student. He has no one, he doesn’t know what to hold on to and, for what he perhaps mistakes for a sign of destiny, he chooses to stay with Sam and his little black and white cat, Frodo.
Frodo will save both Sam and Eric several times, saving himself in turn from various and increasingly improbable deadly situations, which in the end can only lead to one conclusion: he is the real hero, the incredible (and very tender) protagonist who steals the scene and calms panic attacks with his purring. We’re joking, but not too much.
A new leading couple
Lupita Nyong’o is always amazing and again one look is enough for her to change the emotion of a scene. The intimacy she experiences on screen with Joseph Quinn allows her to surprise the audience in several moments, which are perhaps worth the entire film.
Perhaps the surprise effect and the genius of the first one have been lost in Krasinski’s films. A Quiet Placehere’s why instead Day 1 bets on an effective and original duo of protagonists, who immediately attract attention both for their previous works and for the electricity with which one invests the other and vice versa.
In short
Promoted without debts, but it could have been better, especially after such a long wait. The main and sci-fi plot creaks, too close to expectations even in the jump scares. Instead, the dramatic component led by Lupita Nyong’o and completed by Joseph Quinn, her splendid accomplice in this swing of tears and emotion, is surprising.
A cut above the rest, of course, is little black and white Frodo, the cat who walks on a leash and at the same time does nothing to keep us from believing that he is not an ancient, untamable deity. And he is so intelligent that he never meows: that is how you save yourself.
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