Originally created by Bryan Woods (65; Heretic) and Scott Beck (65; Heretic), under the vision of actor/writer/director John Krasinski (IF; A Quiet Place), the A Quiet Place film series is a creature feature with a character-driven heart. The first film, 2018’s A Quiet Place, introduced audiences to the Abbott family who lived quiet lives in the literal sense, doing their best to avoid all noise so as not to draw the attention of ferocious aliens roaming the area, using sound to track and murder their prey. Using the production design, the film was able to communicate that the Abbotts had been able to create a community in which colored lights around the property convey distress to those on the farmland on which they resided and a fire atop a tower signaled distress to the neighborhood. Though the 2021 direct sequel, A Quiet Place Part II, offers a glimpse of the day the aliens attacked, it’s the Michael Sarnoski-directed A Quiet Place: Day One which offers the clearest picture of the day Earth went silent. Now, fans of the film can delve into the cinematic world more deeply from the safety of their couch via the home release from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.
L-R: Actors Alex Wolff and Lupita Nyong’o, producer John Krasinski, and director Michael Sarnoski on the set of A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE from Paramount Pictures. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
While on a day trip with her hospice community to New York City, Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), her nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff), and all the guests at an afternoon puppet show matinee find themselves trading the antics of a marionette for the horrors of an alien invasion. With information slowly coming in via a radio and overheard announcements made from planes, an evacuation is put into motion, except Samira doesn’t plan to join them. She plans to head to Harlem instead.
In the featurette “Day Zero: Beginnings and Endings,” Krasinski discusses how the seed of the idea for Day One began with the design of Part II’s opening in which audiences are shown what the Abbott’s went through before life on the remote upstate New York farm. This seed was taken by Sarnoski, nurtured, and grown into a lovely story centering personal agency and reclamation. For those who saw Sarnoski’s prior film, the incredible 2021 drama Pig, one already possesses a sense of excitement as we know that Sarnoski can handle the human elements. Here, it’s once more the characters that create opportunities for unexpected surprises, a particular necessity for (a) a prequel and (b) the third entry in a series. Smartly, like the two prior films, Sarnoski doesn’t spend too much time explaining the rules, using intentional shortcuts to maintain focus on Samira (our initial audience guide) and her emotional/physical journey. This translates to unknown amounts of time passing when Samira first falls unconscious during the initial alien attack of the film, waking to discover that enough people have figured things out so that no time is wasted on the *discovery* of silence. An additional smart move in terms of world building is that Sarnoski returns Djimon Hounsou (Gladiator; Constantine) to the series, having him play Henri, the man we meet in Part Two who explains the island a group of survivors live on in relative unity and peace thanks to the alien invaders’ inability to swim. This not only creates a tether between the narratives of the three films (and gives audiences more Hounsou, which is never a bad thing), it helps create a mythos for a man we already know is intelligent — and now we get to see it in action. We don’t get answers to questions set up in the first film like, “how the hell did someone print newspapers on loud-ass printing machines and survive?,” but we do get a sense of the violence and trauma inflicted upon the survivors of the initial attack. Thus comes the twist of the film established in the opening scene with Samira and it’s what powers the rest of the film: she’s dying and thus surviving means something different to her than it does to the others around her.
L-R: Lupita Nyong’o as Samira and Djimon Hounsou as Henri in A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE from Paramount Pictures. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
This is where Sarnoski’s script derives its power: what does it mean to be dying when everything around you is under attack? What do you live for? For Samira, it’s a slice of pizza. While some New Yorker’s may take this as a joke at first, her desire for a slice runs deeper and its this quest whcih puts her on a path to meet Joseph Quinn’s Eric, a young man from the United Kingdom who barely survives drowning in the subway and is drawn to Samira by her service cat Frodo. It’s in this moment that we realize that Frodo is now the central character by which we, the audience, are following events. Where the cat goes, so do we follow (you know, because cat), a narrative choice by Sarnoski that empowers him to add dramatic tension and create opportunities to learn things about this world that we hadn’t yet because sometimes a cat is gonna cat and do what it wants, whereas a human might not wander into certain darkly-lit, fire-filled areas. But, back on point, Samira’s on such a mission that, visually, Sarnoski creates a moment in which we observe Samira literally moving against a tide a people as they head toward supposed safety and she toward Harlem. Whereas the characters we meet in the other two films want to live, seek to defy the alien and pursue life, Samira only wants to live long enough to get a specific slice. Meeting Eric has its advantages for when she’s too sick to find herself replacement medicine (a sequence that made this reviewer realize that, in such an apocalypse, I would likely die quickly due to either my shitty eye-sight, migraines, and other chronic issues: woo-hoo … ?), but it also means she must connect with another human, something which she doesn’t seem to want to do at the start, Nyong’o (Us; The 355), swiftly conveying in the opening how the terminal illness has turned her poetic soul sour. Impressively, Sarnoski doesn’t utilize expected tropes wherein someone in an extreme situation hungers for life; rather, the arc of Samira, and Nyong’o’s often understated performance, is one of resolute determination to reclaim agency of her death, to do what she needs to do and go out as she wants, not by illness or extraterrestrial menace. For his part, Quinn (Stranger Things; Overlord; the upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps) is a smart match to play opposite Nyong’o, an actor who can say so much physically where sounds are impossible, starting off like a terrified child frozen under the weight of what’s happening until things soften and he’s able to give warmth and support in times of personal turmoil. Throughout the bonus features, Samira is referred to as Sam and the cat is Frodo, so one can certainly see how this is a story referencing another ill-fated journey into Mordor, this time with no wizard, eagles, or knights to aid them.
Now, if you’re in the market to watch the film, you’ve got options. The film came available on VOD/digital July 30th, to stream on Paramount+ on August 27th, and is now slated for physical release on October 8th. There does appear to be two steelbook options when searching online, along with standard 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD releases. The press release doesn’t indicate if the bonus features are restricted by format, so make sure to read over the physical version you select before purchase if special features are a must for you.
L-R: Director Michael Sarnoski and actor Lupita Nyong’o on the set of A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE from Paramount Pictures. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
For the steelbooks, the first option is the generally available 4K UHD Blu-ray combo that seems to be available at various retailers. This one is primarily black on the outside with a red soundwave running back-to-front across it, the front portion shaped like the New York City skyline and Samira’s face atop it. Inside, underneath the clear plastic of the disc holder, is an inverted image with red being primary and the soundwave black, still skyline-shaped and with additional details. The second option is a Wal-Mart exclusive that inverts the colors on the first and doesn’t seem to include Samira at all, just red with a black soundwave in the shape of the New York City skyline. The back has “Stay Quiet Stay Alive” written in black lettering. I can’t seem to find a picture of the inside, so best of luck with that one.
As Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment provided the first-mentioned steelbook, what follows will discuss the 4K UHD Blu-ray Combo steelbook edition.
First, compared to other steelbooks, this one is not so great with finger-prints which are visible quickly, really tarnishing the otherwise simple and clean design of the art. Second, on the plus side of things, it appears that all of the listed bonus features below are included on the 4K UHD disc, the Blu-ray disc, and the iTunes digital edition. While this is great in terms of a lack of gate-keeping (the new Deadpool & Wolverine is terrible with it), it does make an impact on the 4K UHD presentation. Because the 4K UHD disc needs space for all the bonus features, there’s less space for the film itself, which shows when checking out the metadata for the visual presentation. While the bitrate does drop as low as the 40s and go as high as the low 70s, the film generally sits within the 50 Mbps range during home viewing. Now, the film itself is lovely, the cinematography from Patrick Scola (Pig; Sing Sing) capturing the horror of the situation with a naturalism that gives it a certain beauty, so I don’t think anyone is going to have an issue with how it looks — the frequent blacks are inky and dark; the reds brought from flames are rich; the white either of smoke or from a flashlight are strikingly clear — but the film is heavily adjusted in post-production to account for the on-set work done on the backlot, as well as CG invader integration. 4K UHD is never as strong with heavy CG work unless fully-animated, so when you have that issue plus space taken up by bonus features, there’s less room for data; thereby reducing the bitrate. Dune: Part Two is another film from this year with this particular issue, impacting the enjoyment of the film far more than it does to Day One. Thankfully, the sound design is as immaculate as ever. Reproduced in 5.1 (Dolby Atmos, if you have a compatible system), it just envelopes you, whether it’s weighted silence or apocalyptic destruction. The sound design is the best part of the three films and, thankfully, this one doesn’t disappoint either, even if the picture isn’t as strong.
L-R: Joseph Quinn as Eric and Lupita Nyong’o as Samira in A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE from Paramount Pictures. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
For those interested in filmmaking, there’s are five different featurettes totaling roughly 38 minutes and four extended scenes and one deleted scene totaling just over 15 minutes. The five featurettes drill down into five different aspects of the film, surprisingly offering no overlap in the exploration of the scenes or discussion by the cast and crew of their respective thematic elements. You can learn about the germination that led to the concept of the film, how Sarnoski got attached, how Sarnoski and production designer Simon Bowles (The Descent) took the foot path Samira takes in order to get the look as accurate as possible, the introduction of a new monster and its role, and why the quest for pizza matters — among other things, of course. There’re some interesting filmmaking secrets about a few of the stunts, as well as some tidbits that may interest those curious about the integration of CG to transform the backlot into the version of New York City we see on screen. As for the extended scenes, one does get a sense of why they were trimmed, either for time, for pacing, or that other moments did the job, as well; though the deleted scene, “Poetry At Patsy’s,” is nice in that we get a bit more of Samira’s literature, which is lovely.
As mentioned in the featurettes, Day One demonstrates that the A Quiet Place films don’t need to involve the Abbotts anymore. They can and, if there’s a story worth telling, I’m sure Krasinski and company will try to get it made, but, there’s no need to. These films, much like the Cloverfield Universe, can each occupy a different space, be told with different narrative techniques, and explore different ideas. The first was about parenthood, the second about children growing to be the providers, and, with this one, it’s about making our death our own. While I do think that certain stories should end, I will admit that A Quiet Place still has enough excitement, enough possibilities, that this third outing may just be a precursor to at least one more in which the people of the island use what Millicent Simmonds’s Regan Abbott taught them to start fighting back. Does that mean we’ll be done in four films? Something tells me not, as long as the films remain critically and generally appreciated.
A Quiet Place: Day One Special Features*:
- “Day Zero: Beginnings and Endings” — Hear from John Krasinski, cast, and crew as director Michael Sarnoski takes the reins for this character-driven prequel. (7:58)
- “In the City: Chaos in Chinatown” — See how the production crew recreated Manhattan from scratch in order to destroy it. Plus, hear from some new and familiar faces from the franchise. (7:52)
- “The Exodus: Against the Tide” — Go behind-the-scenes of the exodus sequence that employed over a hundred extras and a clever mix of practical and visual effects. (6:28)
- “The Long Walk: Monsters in Midtown” — Meet Frodo the cat and the animal trainers behind the fantastic feline performance. Plus, filmmakers detail Sam, Eric, and Frodo’s long walk through the city. (7:50)
- “Pizza at the End of the World” — Hear from cast and crew about why a quest for pizza when the world is under attack poignantly speaks to our humanity. (7:18)
- Four (4) Extended and One (1) Deleted Scenes (15:25)
*Bonus features may vary by retailer
Available on digital July 30th, 2024.
Available on Paramount+ August 27th, 2024.
Available on 4K UHD Steelbook, 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD October 8th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Paramount Pictures A Quiet Place: Day One webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming
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