REVIEW: ‘A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE’ IS UNNECESSARY DRAMA

Imagine being secretly in love with someone for years, and one day they confess they feel the same. Just as you are about to take the relationship to the next level, with giddy promises of joy, sound-sensitive monsters fall from the sky, interrupting your budding romance. Suddenly, you can’t talk to each other anymore. You can’t even kiss. Every single second, there’s the threat of a gruesome death separating you.

Or maybe you are newlyweds, or you just found out you are pregnant, when aliens come hurtling toward your city, consuming humans. Yes, just as you are about to start a family.

After such great news, a life-changing milestone within the realm of family and relationships, when laughter, speech and intimacy are essential, these aliens halt what could have been a chance for undiscovered happiness. Understanding that death is just a decibel away, the audience wouldn’t want any of the characters to die because it would be painful for those they would leave behind.

But that is not the case in A Quiet Place: Day One. The main characters are not embarking on a new, exciting chapter. Sam (played by Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o) is dying from cancer, and Eric (Joseph Quinn), who suffers from panic attacks, is a newly enrolled law student.

How can we sympathize with either of these strangers or root for their survival? Sam is going to die soon anyway. Her last wish, a slice of pizza from Harlem (yes, how pretentious), is not enough to twist the heart. Meanwhile, Eric’s life of academics seems trivial. What use is a law degree if the world is ending before your eyes?

Sam and Eric do not form any sort of silent romance, or a special bond, either — they are merely compassionate toward one another.

That’s the issue with this third installment of the popular franchise. No matter how delightfully nuanced the performances of the lead characters are, you do not care about Sam and Eric’s journey. You don’t know them deep enough.

The original masterpiece, John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place, hinges on a multilayered family drama and tragedy. The audience immediately sympathizes with the characters — an established family — and their colorful internal lives as they navigate a world of deafening, threatening silence. Sam and Eric offer no emotional connection with the audience.

Day One is the genesis of the alien invasion, but the focus is on New York City alone. Strangely, the citizens immediately understand that sound is what will kill them. How could word spread so quickly? Okay, suspension of disbelief.

Since the script offers no new information, and this prequel is merely a template of the first two movies (make a sound and die), the film is burdened to craft new, imaginative, thrilling ways to provide tension, stress and fear from the already-familiar monsters — plus heart-wrenching drama. Day One failed to do so.

The suspense is sparse. The story is mostly focused on Sam’s internal drama, which we can only imagine through her eyes.

Frodo the cat is an attempt to appeal to the emotions of pet owners. The animal, narrative-wise, is a backup plan. If you don’t find yourself concerned about the lead human characters, at least there’s a therapy cat to root for. Since they cannot use a noisy dog, yes, it has to be a valium-like cat who never meows.

Writer-director Michael Sarnoski, though, designed a breathtaking aesthetic of a ruined New York City. Playing with smoke, light and shadows, old churches and theaters, modern buildings, spider-like killer aliens and Nyong’o’s expressive eyes, the film’s atmosphere is more beautiful than menacing. Even the aliens look striking.

Visually stunning and intermittently engaging, Day One is not exactly bad, but it is unnecessary.

2.5 out of 5 stars

Now showing in cinemas