A morning with beautiful weather in New York. The metropolis begins another day of diverse, dynamic, noisy life. Suddenly, an extraordinary event happens, an event that will change everyone’s lives. No, it’s not about a movie about 9/11. ‘A Quite Place: Day One‘ is a movie about the invasion of extraterrestrial aliens that will destroy, for the thousandth time in the history of cinema, Manhattan. We won’t learn much about the invaders, except that they are ugly murderous monsters that are guided by sounds. In fact, chances are that fans of alien horror movies already know them, as the 2024 film is a prequel to the first two films in the ‘A Quite Place’ series co-written and directed by John Krasinski. This time Krasinki is only co-author of the script, with Michael Sarnoski directing.
The horror – aliens combination is already known, but the screenwriters had the inspiration to add two very different and very unlikely characters for films of this genre. Samira (Sam) is a poet, suffering from a probably terminal illness. She is in Manhattan with her caregiver from the clinic where she is being treated, for what could be her last visit to the city where she grew up and with which she has the best childhood memories. In a way, though, the constant pain and awareness that death is coming anyway make her a special kind of fighter for survival. She is the one who provides moral support to those around her, including Eric, a young Englishman visiting New York just as catastrophe strikes. The two will form an alliance for a few hours in order to survive. Manhattan is the loudest place in the world, and that’s why the odds are better for the marginalized, the outsiders.
The creators of this third film in the cycle ‘A Quiet Place’ manage to continue on the same line of quality what they had achieved in the first two films. They don’t insist too much with the description of the monsters, which we only see for fractions of a second, and they do not get complicated with technologies. The the story is kept at minimal necessity and nothing excessive is added. There are some fairly well done horror and action thriller scenes, but they aren’t the principal. The only thing I felt was missing from the script was more consistency in the portrayal of the character of Eric, played by Joseph Quinn. Sam dominates the story, and not just because of Lupita Nyong’o‘s excellent acting. Manhattan is, perhaps, destroyed again, but we will remember – even after the movie ends – Sam, the poet who knows how to suppress her own cries of pain and help those around her.