Have to love a quiet theater on a late night for an intense watch-along of ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’. Got to be honest as I first went into this film, I was skeptical as I was never a huge fan of either previous installments of the franchise for the simple reason of: WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO LIVE IN A WORLD LIKE THIS?! Have to sneeze, alien comes and kills you. Pass Gas? Let it rip baby it’ll be your last anyways. Even with these gripes I went into this one with an open mind and left oddly emotional and obviously craving pizza.

It’s hard to get into much about this film without spoiling but ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ takes place in New York City, which per the film gives off a sound decibel equivalent to a scream at all times, not the ideal place to be with aliens that hunt off sound. We primarily follow Lupita Nyongo’s Samira who is coming into the city for a show but clearly that won’t be the end of it. As the aliens crash down onto Earth and the slaughter begins you get to see a new perspective on the chaos of the Day One briefly shown in the previous installments.

Nyongo makes her journey through the film accompanied by the film’s standout, Frodo. The adorable cat keeps you on the edge of your seat as you see humans slaughtered just hoping the little guy makes it out unscathed. Joseph Quinn of ‘Stranger Things’ fame also joins Nyongo on her journey through New York as Eric, a law student from London who suffers panic attacks approximately every 12 minutes, but who can blame him! While the horror and tense scenes are there, the film primarily serves as a character piece filled with emotional, dramatic scenes that make you connect with these characters than a movie of this genre would have you believe.

Before going into *spoilers* I found A Quiet Place: Day One to be my personal favorite of the series, the story pulled me in more than the others, and I can understand fighting to survive on the initial days as you search for means to escape to a sanctuary. If you were a fan of the previous two, this should be good enough for you to enjoy, but expect more of a slow pace and drama than the previous two installments.

Spoilers Below

Immediately from the jump we are told Nyongo’s Samira is in hospice as she is terminally ill and gets playfully tricked by a nurse played by Alex Wolff to accompany the group to a show in the city. All she asks for return is Pizza and Wolff agrees, unfortunately the attack occurs prior to the pizza. I thought it was an effective means to have Samira be basically an already dead woman walking as their was a unique way of telling the story outside of just survive and get to the water!

Along her journey to said pizza, she runs into Eric who chooses to follow her on her quest instead of heading to the water. Together they have some great character moments, one including them talking in her old city apartment about their dad’s love for piano and her success as a poet (that she has now shunned since being ill). Through intense sequences including a thrilling underwater subway escape, they finally reach Harlem and discover that the pizza shop is no more as the attacks have destroyed the place she was searching for. To have some sort of moment, Eric asks to be taken to the jazz club Samira went with her dad after they would get pizza. The moments they share in the jazz club are great, Eric performs a silent magic trick acting as if a full bar is watching on, and goes out to the corner to bring back in some 99 cent pizza. Nyongo finds an ipod and stereo, and while your waiting for Frodo to jump on the piano, or one of their drinking glasses to hit the ground, it doesn’t! The moment of silence they share is the highlight of the film and makes both characters flourish as the 3rd act closes with Nyongo helping Eric and Frodo escape to boats leaving the shore as she distracts the aliens with sound. Luckily she doesn’t die in the process as that would practically be a carbon copy of Krasinski’s death in the first film, but instead she smiles as Eric and Frodo are saved by the boat sailing in the water.

The film ending with Eric opening up his jacket to discover Nyongo left him a note (and a poem) instructing him on Frodo’s needs, but really thanking him for letting her live again, and that it was all she ever wanted. The most effective piece is when she mentions how much you can hear the city sing, when it is quiet. We watch her walk through the deserted wasteland of New York, but then she stops, unplugging her headphones from a speaker as ‘Feeling Good’ blasts throughout the city and an alien drops down in the distance.

A Quiet Place: Day One exceeded my expectations and then some, and while the scares and thrills are there, even a few shotty jump scares, the emotional core of this installment is what elevates it. Whether a fan of the series or not, there is something anyone can grab onto in this film that will make you appreciate what you have, while you have it.

3.5/5