WARNING: This Review May Contain Spoilers
I’ll be honest, and I don’t care if I sound like terrible person here, but watching A Quiet Place: Day One I cared more about the survival of Frodo the cat that any of the actual human characters involved. Anyway, I’ve always seen this as a questionable concept – which is why I haven’t seen A Quiet Place until the writing of this article. Once again, thank you 2024 for the constant inspiration.
89 Days Later
Interestingly, when the trailer was released for A Quiet Place: Day One, they seem to count down from 400+ days. Now I assumed this is because the scene they use of John Krasinski in the trailer is actually from the second film – hence the longer period of time because A Quiet Place starts only 89 days after first landing of the creatures. How wrong was I! The clip is taken from the first film so why make us think more time had passed than it has? OK, yes the second time we see a change in time it says Day 473 but the time difference between the two films is technically ONLY 89 days.
The World is A Quiet Place
In A Quiet Place: Day One, there is a moment towards the beginning where we focus on a globe with the names of countries taped to it. Now, because this is positioned next to someone listening to a radio – I naturally I assumed that this meant even though we focused on New York, the’ events we are witnessing are happening across the world. Now, this could have been done in any city because it is just a subtle hint so why were both films set in America?
A Higher Hearing
The only thing that bothers me with any of these films is that if these creatures genuinely have a heightened sense of hearing…they would hear things like a can of cat food being opened, just like they hear the shirt rip. Yeah, I know some of you may say the generator lured them there but ‘heightened’ usually means the slightest sound will draw them. It’s even right there behind Sam when she’s heavy breathing and NOTHING – I’m sorry but it makes no sense. OK, it is revealed in A Quiet Place: Day One that they seem to have to open their faces to amplify the hearing but we only see this once when Eric is trying to retrieve Sam’s medication. PLUS, if this is the case, why does Evelyn try so hard in A Quiet Place for the pills not rattle? It all feels a little like they pick and choose when the creatures can pick up on the sound.
Alien Autopsy
Now, the main thing I really wanted to learn for this article was a lot more about the antagonists of these films. Because of the opening scene from A Quiet Place: Day One we presume they are aliens. Unfortunately because in both this and A Quiet Place we are mainly focused on specific characters, the aliens slightly take a back seat in both films to learning about life after their arrival for the humans left alive. The one things we do learn however is that they cannot swim! We even see it in action when one tries to follow Sam, Eric and Frodo (can’t forget the cat) through the flooding subway system and ends up drowning. Now, it could be down to evolution or the fact that the Abbotts’ basement fills with only shallow water – but one swims to try and get to Evelyn and her new born baby in A Quiet Place.
Along with this, we discover that these are egg laying creatures – as Eric accidentally stumbles across one of their nests in A Quiet Place: Day One. I actually found the set up rather similar to that of the Xenomorphs in Alien just without the thin layer of smoke around them. Now, you would naturally assume that wherever these creatures are – there can’t be a nest too far away, because maybe they are trying colonize the planet and the human deaths are them protecting their nest? So, can someone tell me why the Abbott family never seems to stumble across one?
The Unanswered Question
This is actually the one thing that bothered me about watching A Quiet Place: Day One. Usually with prequels, they are used as an explanation for why the events take place in the previous films. Now, on the one hand – yes we see the arrival of these creatures but, on the other hand, we never actually find out why! Did these creatures choose Earth specifically? Is it just a coincidence that potentially Earth was caught in a meteor shower and these creatures lived on said meteors? There is honestly no way of knowing because there is no explanation. All we discover is that it seems the Army knew something was about to happen as they tried to evacuate the people of New York City before it happened.
The Power of Speech
This is possibly my favourite thing about A Quiet Place. The film is an hour and twenty-three minutes and for the majority of this time, none of our characters speak a single word! In A Quiet Place: Day One, Sam teaches Eric to use other sounds to hide – like speaking at a volume under the rain or waiting for a thunder clap before kicking the door but clearly in the 89 days between the two films, people learnt it was just wiser to use sign language than to speak. Obviously, this isn’t me saying that sign language isn’t a way of speaking because it is, so maybe a better way of putting it is that lines are vocalised throughout the film.
A Little Bit Clichéd
Maybe it’s just me, and the number of these types of films I’ve seen, but it was obvious to me in the prequel that Sam was going to sacrifice herself at the end in order to make sure that Eric was able to make it to the boat and be saved. It honestly made it rather frustrating for me – it would have been nice for it to have been the other way around – not that I wanted to watch Joseph Quinn die in something else (losing Eddie in Stranger Things was hard enough thank you very much!) Now, this is not something you can say about A Quiet Place, even those who haven’t seen the film will be aware of the scene with the boy and the spaceship right? Because it was in the trailer back in 2018. Well, let’s just say it’s not exactly a happy ending for the boy but I was genuinely expecting his dad to make it to him in time.
In Conclusion
I said in the beginning that I have always been sceptical regarding A Quiet Place so had not watched it until now. I’ll be honest, I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I did the prequel. Maybe part of this is because we focus on a whole family rather than 1 or 2 main characters or the fact that I found parts of Sam’s character in A Quiet Place: Day One completely unnecessary.
