Lupita Nyong’o single-handedly breathes life into an otherwise tame horror feature in ‘A Quiet Place: Day One'.
In this movie, Sam is a woman in hospice with cancer, essentially just waiting for death. Her nurse, Reuben (Alex Wolff), insists on taking her and the other patients to a marionette show in New York City with the promise of stopping for pizza on the way back. It is while they are in the city that the aliens come down from the sky, leaving Sam and her cat to navigate the remains of a silent city, trying to fulfill the ultimate goal of her trip by getting some pizza. Eric (Joseph Quinn), is a law student who eventually joins her on the trip who is determined to help her and learn to live a little himself.
Going in, I will admit that I tend to be slightly biased against PG-13 horror movies. It’s not necessarily because I don’t think a good story can be told in the PG-13 format but simply that it is harder to believe in the stakes. While there is something to be said about the way Sam’s (Lupita Nyong’o) friends are plucked off of the street in the same way a big bird sweeps in for its prey, I don’t think this necessarily did anything to make up for that loss of tension.
There were many scenes in the movie where I could see the potential for something to be scary that lacked follow through. For instance, at one point in the film, Eric has ventured into what seems to be a nest or home of some sort for the alien creatures, and he comes across strange objects that seem to resemble eggs, but I noticed that they seemed to be made up of human hair/viscera. My friend who I had watched with was watching the movie for the second time and didn’t notice this until I pointed it out. I think the idea that the monsters could be taking the humans and almost digesting them in a way — breaking down their bodies — to make into these eggs that produce real food for them is probably one of the most horrifying ideas presented in the movie, but it was only briefly hinted at, and by briefly, I mean briefly.
Moments like this are where I feel like the PG-13 rating brings down a movie; if these pods were slightly more detailed or grotesque or even if we spent more time exploring what exactly they were, the idea would have been communicated more efficiently in a more harrowing way, à la Nope’s famous digestion scene.
To be totally honest, I don’t think this movie was really trying to be “scary” at all. Aside from a couple cheesy jumpscares thrown in there for poorly conceived shock value and a few scenes that seemed like they were ripped straight from the 2015 video game Until Dawn, being horrifying or making the viewer uncomfortable was definitely not the goal of this movie.
The film focused almost entirely on the story between Sam and Eric — Sam is someone who had given up on living because she knew she was going to die, and Eric was someone who had never lived for himself. I honestly got the impression that Eric was depressed, guided by his father on a path he had no interest in, and I learned that rumors confirmed he was originally intended to be suicidal but this was later cut from the movie. I think that keeping this detail could have added an additional, more inspiring layer to this movie’s ending without adding much to the film’s quick 99 minute runtime.
That’s not to say that I didn’t love the movie’s ending as is. I thought it subverted what is sadly a common trope where the Black character sacrifices themselves to save a white character’s life by having her survive her sacrifice, as unrealistic as that might have been. She’s smart, and at the end of the day, she gets to end things on her own terms, listening to the music that brought her so much joy in her childhood and comfort during her time in hospice rather than simply waiting for death. The way I interpret the movie, she would have stayed in the city regardless, with the only exception being her getting on the boat simply to save her father’s jacket and her cat. Her emotional arc including her experiencing that “final time in the city” she had always dreamed of and learning to really live in her last moments was very heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time.
In a way, I think this movie would have been better if it hadn’t shoehorned in so much “horror.” Don’t get me wrong — I love horror, and it’s my favorite genre of all time — but I feel like the scary parts of this movie were by far the weakest and most underdeveloped. I won’t get into the technicalities of the monsters’ ability to discern sound (though I will say I’m not sure I understand why a. they don’t end up attacking each other more often and b. a shirt ripping was loud enough to get their attention but Sam and Eric repeatedly dropping things wasn’t), but almost every jumpscare felt forced. One particularly egregious instance included a probably 10-second dream sequence ending with a monster jumping through the window. This scene didn’t add anything to the movie, and it followed a moment of levity rather than one of tension, so it didn’t even serve as a release in that way. I felt this was the case for a lot of the jumpscares.
I also expected to be more blown away by the sound design. That’s not to say that it was bad by any stretch because it definitely wasn’t, but it didn’t feel like you had to see this in the theater to get the full experience, almost like it was designed to be sent off to streaming. I understand catering to streaming to a certain extent, but I do feel like sound is the one thing that theaters can and consistently do better, and for a franchise so tied up in sound, I’m not sure why this wasn’t spectacular.
The sound only negatively stood out to me most during a scene where Eric was attempting to retrieve medicine for Sam. It was an inexplicably silent scene; while I understand that the world around them is always silent, there was usually music in the background, or at least generic city breeze and things like that. The silence seemed jarring, and by the end of the scene, it was clear they had only done this to build tension for another fake out jumpscare. The silent cityscape could have been something interesting to explore, but since they weren’t as committed to that through the rest of the movie (which is fair; music really does help explain emotional cues when faced with silent protagonists), it just felt out of nowhere in that scene.
Nyong’o gave a standout performance as Sam. She had a sort of emotional honesty in the role that I believe would be difficult to replicate and was essential in getting the audience to buy the premise of the movie without the physical stakes that might have been there in an R-rated movie with more violence, scares, and gore. She made the story aspect of the movie aside from the horror work in a way that I’m not sure would’ve worked otherwise. I suppose Quinn was an adequate supporter, but I’m not sure there is much to say beyond that. I didn’t particularly enjoy his performance, but in all honesty, besides the lore I was trying to invent for him in my head, the character didn’t give him much to work with.
Overall, I don’t think this movie delivered on the horror part of its premise, though I did cry at the ending, so it couldn’t have been too bad.
★★★☆☆
6.9 out of 10
Go see A Quiet Place: Day One in theaters today!
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