A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

The original A Quiet Place (2018), directed by John Krasinski, earned something of a cult following by doing what most mainstream horror films are reluctant to do: trusting its audience to sit with silence, with dread, with very little in the way of hand-holding. A sequel followed in 2021, also directed by Krasinski, and together the two films built a reputation for considered, small-scale horror with genuine emotional weight. A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) is the third entry in the franchise and functions as a prequel, taking the action back to the very first hours of the alien invasion and relocating it from rural America to New York City. The premise is straightforward enough: a woman named Sam, accompanied by her cat, tries to stay alive in a city that has been thrown into immediate, catastrophic chaos by creatures that hunt entirely by sound. It is a horror-thriller running at a lean 100 minutes, produced by Paramount Pictures alongside Platinum Dunes and Sunday Night Productions.

The film was directed by Michael Sarnoski, whose debut feature Pig (2021) attracted considerable critical praise for its restrained, melancholy tone, suggesting a filmmaker with a feel for quiet character study. Whether that sensibility translates to a big-studio franchise entry is a question worth asking. Leading the cast is Lupita Nyong'o as Sam, an actor with considerable range who has shown a willingness to take on physically and emotionally demanding genre work. Joseph Quinn, whose profile rose sharply following his appearances in television, appears alongside her, with further support from Alex Wolff, Eliane Umuhire, and Djimon Hounsou, the latter having appeared in the second A Quiet Place film. If you enjoy horror that leans into atmosphere and the uncanny, it is also worth having a look at some of the other horror films covered on this site, including Tiger Stripes and Moshari, both of which demonstrate what the genre can achieve on a smaller scale. For something on the bigger, louder end of the 2020s science fiction spectrum, there is also the site's take on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which raises its own questions about what franchise prequels actually owe their audiences.

A Quiet Place: Day One tries to take us back to the beginning (the first chaotic hours of the alien invasion that plunged the world into silence) but ends up undermining everything that made the original so gripping. Instead of deepening the mythology or offering fresh insight, it mostly just shows more of what we’ve already seen: cities crumbling, people screaming, and now (crucially) way too many of those sound-hunting creatures swarming every street like a budget CGI horde. And that’s the fatal flaw: tension thrives on scarcity, on the unknown. When the monsters are everywhere, all the time, they stop feeling threatening and start feeling routine. The film leans heavily on spectacle over suspense, replacing the original’s nail-biting restraint with loud, frequent attacks that drain the horror of its power. The lead performance is earnest, and there are fleeting moments of human connection, but the script offers little in the way of new ideas or emotional depth. It doesn’t meaningfully explain the aliens’ origins, their weaknesses, or why they’re here, it just drops you into the panic without payoff. It’s competently made, but hollow at its core. As an origin story, it adds nothing essential; as a horror film, it forgets that silence was never the gimmick, it was the discipline. This one shouts when it should whisper. Easily the weakest of the trilogy.

What stays with me most, thinking back on it, is that feeling of a film that had genuine material to work with and simply chose not to use it. Nyong'o gives it everything she has, and there are one or two moments where the human story almost lands, but the script keeps pulling the rug out from under her. For me, the comparison to the first film is inescapable, and it is not a flattering one. A prequel that tells us less about its world than we already knew going in is a peculiar achievement. I will keep watching where this franchise goes, if it goes anywhere, but my expectations will be calibrated accordingly. Sometimes the most damning thing you can say about a film is that it had a good idea and left it at the door.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 2024  | Watched: 2026-02-11

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) on YouTube

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