‘Quiet Place: Day One’ powered by Lupita Nyong’o

Prequels are tricky. “A Quiet Place: Day One” shows how difficult it can be to set a film in a period before we know where the story is going to go.

The previous “A Quiet Place” movies showed the aftermath of an invasion by aliens with incredible hearing. The only way to survive is to not make a sound. It really wasn’t important in those two movies to explain why the world had become so silent. The tension came from watching the Abbott family get through another day without making a deadly noise. Once the second film introduced a way to deal with the creatures there was no real reason for a film to chronologically unfold next.

That left “Day One” writers Michael Sarnoski (who also directed the film), John Krasinski and Bryan Woods the only option of going back before the introduction of the Abbotts. This was a way to give a backstory to how and why the aliens showed up.

The trio opted against that as the movie opens with them dropping from the sky and starting their murderous ways. Instead, “Day One” uses the same formula as the other two films.

The core of these movies is not an alien invasion but how everyday people would contend with such a situation. That approach gives the movie a far more grounded approach even if it does feel like a remake where the action moved from the countryside to the streets of New York.

This works for one reason and one reason only: the casting of the talented Lupita Nyong’o as the central figure. She’s not running from aliens but rushing toward her own need for reconciliation, redemption and rebirth.

Few actors could play that bevy of emotions as well as Nyong’o. She may not be speaking a single line of dialogue, but her face is screaming every emotional note needed to make the scene work.

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She does this through the character of Samira, a woman who is dealing with healthy issues at a hospice center. Her support group makes the bad decision of heading to New York to see a play on the same day that the alien attack starts.

In a sequence that is eerily reminiscent of the 9/11 attacks, New York becomes a world that has been blocked from the sun by the dust and debris from the initial explosions. Sarnoski takes advantage of the partially blocked view to have New Yorkers gobbled up by the aliens.

Samira initially gets support from her nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff) but that role is taken over at the midway point by Eric (Joseph Quinn), a Brit who made a bad decision to study law in New York. Wolff and Quinn are great supporting players, but it is Nyong’o who carries every scene.

Her story is that while the world is going in one direction, she is charting her own course. This could be the last days of Earth and instead of heading for safety she needs to get to Harlem for a slice of pizza that has serious nostalgic implications.

The hush filled trek through New York is not about dining. This is about Simira going from a person barely managing her pain to one who finally has a reason to move forward. Alien attacks are happening all around her but all that matters is the emotional core of the movie.

There are a few odd elements such as Simira traveling with her cat Frodo. It is one thing to have an animal for emotional support but once it became clear any noise could mean death, that cat should have been sent packing. There’s also no explanation of how survivors know to be quiet. Those are not key issues.

Other invasion films bank on the glory of fighting back for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. “A Quiet Place: Day One” is all about the human spirit. That’s the same film as the other two movies in the franchise, but it is a good enough formula that going to it for the prequel makes sense.

At least that approach eliminates may of the tricky situations that prequels face.

Movie review

A Quiet Place: Day One

Grade: B

Cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Djimon Hounsou, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff.

Director: Michael Sarnoski

Rated: PG-13 for violence, bloody images

Running time: 100 minutes.

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