Cook review: ‘Day One’ is an emotional, fast-paced nail-biter
Ssshhhh.
The quieter you are, the more you will enjoy “A Quiet Place: Day One.”
In some ways, this is a silent movie – or at least part of it. It’s a prequel that gives us a glimpse of the arrival of the vicious aliens that operate so well without sound because they have incredible hearing.
Director Michael Sarnoski has created a great blend of genres, with elements of a thriller, science-fiction, action, horror, and – during one sequence – even a sort of buddy road trip that combine to make a thoroughly entertaining, nail-biting experience.
It’s the humanity of the movie that’s the most memorable and is likely to move you to tears.
The wonderful Lupita Nyong’o is Sam, a woman who is among the patients in a hospice. Sam longs for a pizza “in the city” (New York) and reluctantly goes along – taking her support cat Frodo with her – when a group of health-care providers and patients take a trip to a show.
New York doesn’t so much come to a standstill as it does look skyward, where brilliant lights appear to be falling from the sky.
The invasion has begun.
It doesn’t take long before a massacre of people begins as the aliens make their destructive way through the city. And it also doesn’t take long for people to figure out that the fewer sounds they make, the more likely they are to live.
Sam decides to try to walk from Chinatown to Harlem, where she can finally have that pizza. She learns more about surviving with every step and with every person she encounters.
Listed as writers on the film are Sarnoski, John Krasinski, who also starred in he first two “A Quiet Place” films, and Bryan Woods, who along with Scott Beck and Krasinski wrote the original film.
Take a deep breath, silence your cell phone, and let the quiet make you shudder.
3 ? stars.
Rating: PG-13, for terror and violent content/bloody images.
Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes.
In theaters.
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