A Quiet Place: Day One

Rated PG-13 • Theaters

Six years after its first installment, the Quiet Place franchise returns with a prequel. A Quiet Place: Day One has many of the elements of the first two movies, but fans might feel disappointed with it.

Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), a terminal cancer patient, lives in a New York hospice center along with her beloved cat Frodo and a bunch of old people. Believing her days to be numbered, Sam lets everyone at the center know just how unhappy she feels. On the day Sam reluctantly agrees to a trip into the city, aliens descend upon Manhattan, and the city erupts in pandemonium. Until it goes quiet, that is.

Everyone quickly learns that the aliens are blind, but they have a keen sense of hearing that helps them hunt. If someone steps on a piece of glass or opens a creaky door, the faceless creatures come running in droves.

Despite chronic pain, Sam has got something of an advantage: She’s not afraid to die. While other survivors look for escape from the island, she travels into the heart of the city shouldering an “I love New York” bag and guiding Frodo on a leash.

The movie is rated PG-13. The first few minutes contain the film’s obscenities. There isn’t much dialogue after the invasion begins. Unlike the other two movies, there really isn’t much violence. We see bloodied cars and a few corpses, but the camera doesn’t show much gore. The aliens get more screen time than previous installments, but the unrelenting dread and scariness felt toned down.

Viewers might want more information than this movie offers. Instead of explaining “why our world went quiet” as the advertisements suggest, Day One merely affirms what we already know: Aliens showed up from somewhere, and they have really good hearing. John Krasinki, the writer, director, and star of the first film, helped to produce Day One, but neither he nor his co-star Emily Blunt make appearances, which also might disappoint some fans.

This movie examines some of the same themes as the first movie, and like earlier installments, the alien threat acts as more of a backdrop upon which to explore the relationships between characters. But it would have been nice to push the franchise in a new direction, rather than playing the same old song in a new city.