Somewhat against the odds, the Quiet Place movies have been something of a pleasant surprise. No one really expected a movie from a first time director known mostly for his sitcom acting to be as good as it was, and I am inclined to think the second was somewhere in the same neighborhood in terms of quality. These have been smart movies that work out how people survive in a world where silence is necessary if you don’t want to get yourself killed. Those two movies put a lot of thought into what that would be like in a small, rural community over a year after the initial invasion.
Now, I had wanted to see the latest, a prequel set in a very different location, but I didn’t get the chance when it came out. However, this is the age of streaming. I rarely have to wait long if I really want to see something, and this weekend seemed like a good time to catch up.
Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) is dying of cancer and living in hospice care in the middle of New York City. Her only friend seems to be a therapy cat, even as the nurse, Reuben (Alex Wolff), who looks after her and the other patients in the ward does his best to reach out to her. A field trip for the patients to the city does not go Sam’s way as all she really wants to do is get pizza, not see a puppet show. Pizza and puppets may be the least of her worries, though. It’s Day Zero, and the sound-sensitive aliens have just arrived in a place where the opening narration says the typical sound level is a steady scream. Sam is knocked out, but when she comes to, it’s to a very different world.
From there, Sam will need to do what she can to get to safety. She still wants that pizza for some reason, and given this is the apocalypse, what’s stopping her? She has no one, just the therapy cat that comes and goes as it sees fit–really, a silent apocalypse would be much better for a cat than a dog if you think about it–but Sam gets unexpected company from Eric (Joseph Quinn), an English-born law student who is in a state of near-panic and takes to following Sam around. Can the two survive long enough to join Part II‘s Djimon Hounsou since I know he got to somewhere safe?
John Krasinski didn’t return to the director’s chair for this one, though he does get a story and producer credit. Instead, Pig‘s Michael Sarnoski got the honors this time around, and that does mean the movie has a more human tone. To be clear, there are some good thrills to be found, particularly in scene where Sam and Eric, and it occurs to me those are the names of the twins in Lord of the Flies, navigate a flooded subway tunnel and do their best to avoid the one creature in there. Nyong’o’s large, expressive eyes say a lot in a movie where the characters, by necessity, need to say very little, and her character arc is very well done. The human scenes between Sam and any other people she encounters over the course of the movie, which covers more than a single day all told, and are easily the best parts of the movie.
That said, those scenes also slow the pace down a bit. As well done as they are, this movie makes a few leaps in logic. Humanity apparently figures out pretty darn quick that the creatures have excellent hearing and can’t swim, and the latter of those two weaknesses is something that seemed to be something of a surprise for the characters in the second movie. It would have been nice to see how the characters figured that out without having it just told to them. That’s not really the movie’s focus, but if this is the “Day One” experience, then maybe a little trial and error of some sort would have been appropriate for an otherwise solid human story amidst the end of the world as we know it.
Grade: B
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