The Media Tourist

Alien invaders descend on New York. So, what else is new?

A Quiet Place: Day One
Starring Lupita Nyong’o & Joseph Quinn
Directed by Michael Sarnoski
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, June 28

Shhhhhh! Be very quiet—I’m hunting wabbits.” Maybe you recognize that line from Elmer Fudd in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, decades before this horror franchise launched in 2018 with its scarifying tale of space aliens using supersonic hearing to gobble up humans who made any sound.

There aren’t any “wascally wabbits” in this prequel spinoff about the fateful day the aliens arrived, turning New York City into smoky piles of flaming rubble. But there is a calm little feline—Frodo—and a terminal cancer patient determined to make her way through the decimated core of the Big Apple. Because all Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) wants—all she’s living for—is one more slice of pie from the Harlem pizzeria near her childhood home.

Well, alrighty then—New Yorkers must really love them some pizza, even when under attack by space monsters.

Day One doesn’t have the sheer, pee-your-pants terror of the first movie, or its 2020 follow-up—mainly because we now know what we’re dealing with, the aliens’ ravenous M.O. and how steep the odds are stacked against humanity. “We’re all gonna die!!!!” screams one guy on a rooftop, and well, he’s not entirely wrong. A lot of people do perish, although we never really see them meet their messy ends; we just assume that’s what happens when they’re standing there one second, then—whoosh—an alien swoops in and they’re gone. Like hunting wabbits.

But the handfuls of survivors who somehow avoid becoming alien grub never seem very shell-shocked or shaken about the terrors they’ve been through, or the very dire possibility than any wheezy breath they take could be their last. Ah, those stoic, seen-it-all urbanites, jadedly shuffling off to their doom…or the pizza parlor.

Indie director Michael Sarnoski takes over the reins from John Krasinski, who also starred in the first two films. The former actor from TV’s The Office sits this one out on the sidelines, as a producer, and the movie really misses his touch and the star power he brought with his wife, actress Emily Blunt, to the other films. This movie’s secondary cast (Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsu) is way secondary to the convoluted story of Sam, her jazz-loving late father and the young British man (Joseph Quinn) who becomes her tagalong. But most of the characters, even the main ones, don’t invite much connection or empathy, unlike the imperiled “family members” of the previous films. And transplanting the story from the rural countryside to the hustle-bustle-y Big Apple…meh. We get it: New York’s a noisy place, a cacophony of chaotic sound, a melting pot that now includes aliens from another world. So, what else is new?  

And for a prequel, we never learn anything about the aliens that we didn’t already know, or not know. They’re still an enigmatic invading force from out there somewhere, scampering about like CGI spider monkeys, making a mega mess of things and apparently intent on wiping out humanity. There are a lot of jolt-y scares and some inventive sequences, like a life-or-death chase in a submerged subway. But the “suspension of disbelief” is really stretched, not by the armada of alien invaders, but by wondering how anyone could ever get a cat to be in or under water without having it totally freak out.

And maybe you won’t question how, in a city with no electricity, no running water, and almost everything alien-blasted to smithereens, can you still get pizza?

Early in the film, Sam watches a creepy marionette puppet show in a New York theater, just moments before all hell breaks loose on the streets outside. What did that scene have to do with anything? I’m clueless, except maybe it’s because, when it’s all over, a lot of viewers are going to feel like this Quiet Place was really just pulling their strings, drawing them into a franchise that feels like it’s already whispered all there was to say.  

—Neil Pond