As the title implies, “A Quiet Place: Day One” takes us back to the beginning — the first day of the alien invasion. Sarnoski wisely understands that this doesn’t mean we need a ton of backstory; we don’t learn more about the aliens, or where they come from, or even their motivations. Like a bolt from the blue, or a terrorist attack, they simply arrive one day and death and destruction follows.
Our guide through this is Sam (Lupita Nyong’o), a young woman with a very good cat named Frodo (seriously, if there was an Oscar for cats, this feline would win). Sam is in New York City when the aliens attack, and Sarnoski wastes no time. After a very brief intro that tells us exactly what we need to know about Sam and her situation (I’m being vague here to avoid any major spoilers), all hell breaks loose. Explosions follow, dust and smoke fill the air, and people are pulled off to their deaths by hideous monsters. Sam is knocked unconscious and wakes up later in a theater, where she’s informed by a helpful man (Djimon Hounsou, briefly reprising his role from the second film) to stay quiet. Sam gets it right away: noise attracts the aliens.
Here, Sarnoski and cinematographer Pat Scola give us one of the first of many arresting images: an entire theater of people trying to stay extremely quiet (if only modern movie theaters were like this, am I right, folks?!). Sarnoski, working with Scola, has an incredible eye for staging little moments that pop, and “Day One” is full of lingering shots of a world suddenly ground to a silent halt. We’ve seen plenty of post-apocalyptic imagery in movies and TV before, so it’s not exactly fresh, but Sarnoski manages to make it seem both vivid and haunting here — books scattered by a bookstore, probably never to be read again; silhouettes of people watching bridges toppling; blood splattered on car doors; a flooded subway; two characters kneeling in front of a fire burning from an open manhole. These quiet little moments stun and invoke a city in ruin. One shot of dazed New Yorkers wandering in a mass group through a dusty street will no doubt remind some of images from 9/11, making these scenes of quiet horror painfully familiar.
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