It wasn’t easy at all to find your place in what is now, to all intents and purposes, a franchise. Especially when that place is set by the prequel tracks, which give you room to maneuver up to a certain point and don’t allow you to invent too much. And yet Michael Sarnoski did it with A Quiet Place – Day 1, truly a prequel that you don’t expect, given how it approaches the saga created and launched by John Krasinski, remaining within its stylistic features but planting the seeds of its own cinema that is still very young, but which already manages to have a well-defined identity. With a film, in our theaters from June 27, which 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. 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 a prequel like any other.an 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 which still envelop the city in a fine dust that has never really settled. And in fact he is the character interpreted by Lupita Nyong’oSam, who is hit and soiled by the trauma, just as it has already happened to her, being 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 we understand why Michael Sarnoski’s choice was not accidentalindeed. It was perhaps easier to opt for a “professional” filmmaker who could 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 facetsfor an actor who really 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 profound solitudes mix together seeking the happiness of small things, even while the world is ending, world that can be as effective 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 Pigto tell the little story of a slice of pizza inside the giant of the world that ends. And even if sometimes it seems to us that we walk on Earth without making any noise, like a cat almost apathetic in front of what is happening, we just have to remember that we can enjoy the small and unthinkable things, like liberating music in the face of the apocalypse.
