MOVIE REVIEW – When the end of the world is near, perhaps the most vital thing we can do is take care of one another. This sentiment lies at the core of “A Quiet Place: Day One,” a modest yet effectively melancholic prequel to the 2018 action-horror hit. New York is under alien attack in this gripping horror film starring Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, and an irresistibly cute cat.

 

Taking viewers back to the initial alien invasion that launched the franchise, this new installment introduces fresh characters and themes while maintaining the nail-biting tension of the first two films. Although “Day One” never quite reaches the heights of its predecessors, Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn are compelling as two strangers forced to flee with a cat through a devastated New York City.

 

 

A Modest Yet Effectively Melancholic Prequel

 

Paramount has slated the release for June 28 in the UK and US (with the film hitting theaters locally on June 27), hoping to reinforce a franchise that grossed over $638 million worldwide with its first two films. Original director John Krasinski has passed the torch to Pig writer-director Michael Sarnoski, and Emily Blunt, star of “A Quiet Place” and “A Quiet Place Part II,” does not participate in this prequel. However, Nyong’o’s star power should compensate for this, though the primary allure of “Day One” remains those terrifying creatures that attack by sound, forcing the characters to stay as silent as possible.

Samira (Nyong’o), battling terminal cancer and feeling both defeated and resigned, reluctantly goes on a field trip to Manhattan with her fellow hospice residents, longing for pizza she hasn’t been able to enjoy due to her condition. But once they arrive in the city, horrifying, blind aliens attack from the skies, slaughtering anything and anyone that makes noise. With her loyal cat Frodo by her side, Samira does her best to stay silent and encounters a law student named Eric (Quinn), who, like her, is alone.

 

 

A Small-Scale but Intimate Story

 

Sarnoski, who also wrote “Day One,” tells a story that feels more like a footnote than a bold new chapter in the series. Yet, this prequel’s relative smallness has its advantages, focusing on an intimate tale of a woman bitterly resigned to dying who, through this extraordinary situation, finds reasons to savor what remains of her life. Nyong’o elevates this admittedly cliched character arc, grounding Samira so that we feel her anger and disillusionment — and later, her sadness as she journeys on foot to a Harlem pizzeria that holds sentimental value for her. But the Oscar-winning actress, superb in another horror film, Us, also excels during “Day One’s” taut suspense sequences, her large, expressive eyes conveying her character’s understandable terror as the aliens converge on her.

For 2018’s “A Quiet Place,” Krasinski maximized the film’s central hook, turning the characters’ need to stay quiet at all times into perpetual tension, the silence during the picture’s anxiety-inducing set pieces almost unbearable. Although the novelty of the device may have worn off, “Day One” continues to exploit that idea to strong effect. Cinematographer Pat Scola and production designer Simon Bowles create a Manhattan devastated by the aliens, whose unnerving, inhuman clicking remains the franchise’s most disturbing element. Sarnoski rarely resorts to cheap jump scares or boneheaded character decisions to artificially manufacture dramatic stakes, even if the plotting does get a little thin at points.

 

 

An Intriguing Bond Between Two People and a Cat

 

Interestingly, the writer-director departs from the earlier films’ emphasis on family and parenthood. Instead, this prequel examines two single, childless characters from very different worlds who must form a tight unit if they are to survive. Quinn is saddled with a character who isn’t as well-written, but he is nevertheless affecting as a man who perhaps was lonely even before this alien assault. Eric finds a possible friend in Samira amidst the apocalypse — even if they both know that if they escape these ferocious extraterrestrials, their fate is still likely sealed.

In keeping with “Day One’s” earnest, sentimental undercurrents, Samira’s cat Frodo (played by two felines, Schnitzel and Nico) becomes a crucial figure, offering the characters (and the audience) comforting moments amidst the scare scenes. Pet owners may rightly complain that Frodo is the quietest, most obedient — and, therefore, most unrepresentative — feline in history, but there is also charm in the way Sarnoski clings to these small moments of domestic normalcy. Anyone who has seen the previous “A Quiet Place” films knows that an exuberant happy ending does not await Samira and Eric, but in the time they have together, they might find things that make life a little better. It might be a cute cat or a delicious slice of pizza — or maybe the determination to hold onto their humanity as civilization collapses around them.

-Herpai Gergely “BadSector”-