A Quiet Place: Day One-Equally a Tense Horror Film and an Intimate Character Drama

Michael Sarnoski's intimate dramatic sensibilities lend themselves surprisingly well for A Quiet Place prequel. Within the tense set pieces of A Quiet Place: Day One, there's an intimate character drama about finding genuine connection in a world of seemingly unending bleakness. Through shots of empty streets and rooms full of overwhelmed and terrified people, Sarnoski finds the bleakness within the world of A Quiet Place that makes the genuinely moving interactions between the two leads all the more impactful. There's something so warm and affecting about the two leads' interactions, be it because of Lupita Nyongo and Joseph Qunn's excellent performances or the simultaneously genuine and poetic-sounding dialogue of Sarnoski's script. 

Within the compelling character drama, the film is also effective in its set pieces. Through the long takes following Lupita Nyongo's character as the chaos happens around her, the film genuinely makes you feel her character's overwhelming fear. It helps that unlike the previous films, which tended to overuse their musical scores in a way that feels antithetical to the premise, Sarnoski revels in the silence of scenes, letting every slight sound build tension. The score only builds up when honing into the character drama, culminating in incredibly moving moments. 

The film did lose me in one particular set piece featuring Joseph Quinn's Eric in a swarm of alien creatures, as it causes the film to get a bit sidetracked with its focus on world-building, which didn't work for me as the world-building itself is pretty generic Sci-fi stuff. I also wasn't the biggest fan of the film's use of jump scares throughout the film, as some of them I found pretty annoying.

But despite a few generic and jumpscare-heavy set pieces, the film works incredibly well in transforming itself into a very moving drama of two people growing a genuine human connection and finding hope in a world of constant bleakness. And though not every set piece worked for me, when they did, there was an immense intensity to them. The film's set pieces work in how they sell the chaos around the main character or in how it hones into the lack of sound premise. The film shows Sarnoski's immense talent in providing genuinely moving character moments that keep you invested in the story and make the set pieces even more tense and engaging.

Now Showing in Theaters in the U.S