Shhhhhh Watch: A Quiet Place - Day One

Watched:  06/27/2024

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael Sarnoski

Selection:  SimonUK

I had not seen the two prior installments in the John Krasinski-led A Quiet Place franchise.  From the trailers, it had real "I get it, I'm good" energy.  But I was aware that this one is a prequel to those two prior films, with an all new cast, including the radiant Lupita Nyong'o.  Left to my own devices, I would have maybe seen this in 10 years on streaming.  But I hadn't seen Simon in *forever* and he suggested A Quiet Place: Day One (2024), and, thus, I was like "yeah, sure".

It can be a good experience to do something you're mostly ambivalent about.  And this was a good experience.

Finally seeing one of these movies did confirm my feeling, when seeing the trailers for the two prior films, that the movie is a sort of cinematic parlor game to be played with the audience..  I imagine Krasinski came up with it after trying to play The Quiet Game with his children.  

I would almost compare the set-up to the childhood favorite: Hot Lava.  If you touch the floor, you're dead.  Or, in our case, if you make sound audible to anyone more than ten feet away, you're a goner.  Make a sound and giant aliens, who are absolutely not the Demagorgon from Stranger Things, will show up and butcher you.    

All film is manipulating an audience, from the blandest documentary to the most moving drama.  That isn't bad.  As Nicole Kidman in liminal theater space would argue, the stories of film are there to move us.  Horror, in particular, exists to provide us with a visceral experience.  Horror can be wildly successful in engaging an audience, pulling them in by pushing our "fight or flight" buttons - our most base emotions.  

And so it is with this franchise, which has introduced a novel game:  get the audience to shut the hell up and sit in silence as, engrossed in the film, they don't want to spoil it for our heroes and get them killed.  

At my screening, so in synch was the audience (an opening Thursday night, mostly full), that the theater was practically holding its collective breath through the movie.  Only one person got up to use the can during the movie, and you could hear every footfall he made leaving and returning.*  

And that's really the point of the movie.  Play the game with the characters.

There's a story, and honestly good performances - I'll argue Nyong'o and co-star Joseph Quinn (of Stranger Things fame) absolutely knock it out of the park.  And, I imagine, should these movies continue, actors may be drawn to participating.  It's some raw, pure acting.  You don't get to rely on words - it's a long acting exercise of acting as re-acting to one another and the environment, relying solely on expression.  

SPOILERS

The biggest problem with this movie is that it doesn't seem to understand what hospice care is, and that type of care is essential to the plot.  

The film follows Nyong'o's Samira, a patient in hospice care, dying of cancer.  She agrees to go on an outing in a bus, with her cat Frodo, to see a puppet show along with a bus-load of fellow patients (I know) with the condition that they'll stop for pizza in NYC.  But during the puppet show is when it's clear something is amiss as military jets fly over and Humvees begin rolling by.  

Then the aliens/ monsters start falling like asteroids from space.  

We then follow Samira and her cat making their way back to a favorite pizza place to get a slice.  In the first minute of the movie, we understand, it's the last thing she wants to do before she dies, well before aliens show up.  Along the way she meets young attorney, Eric (Quinn) who is terrified, and with no other direction, he follows Samira.  

Some of it works.  Some of it less so.  But.

The second you learn of Samira's condition, well before the monsters arrive, you've written the movie in your mind.  She's already terminal, so one can guess - as illness has story function in film - she will nobly sacrifice herself for someone or someones.  So it's a bit of kabuki.  You know how this will play out, and it's more a question for the viewer of how well is it going to be done.  And the answer is: the more I think on it, the more questionable this was as a decision from everyone involved.

Practically, it's impossible to understand how and why Samira is able to traverse a wrecked New York on foot, carrying a 10 lb. cat and other supplies if she is in hospice.  She is dying and in palliative care.  So seeing her perform any physical activity in a stressful state is... nonsense.  And maybe insensitive to the countless people who pass that way every year, and their families who have to watch loved ones slip away.

It's not my job to solve a done movie for the film makers, but it seems like changing the film up to something as simple as "I require this med to live, and that won't happen now, as the world is ending, so I guess I'm boned" would have filled the plot holes and still got them where they needed to go.  But maybe that's more frightening, existentially.  And, yet, our medical system in the US.

The idea seems to be that Samira is surprised by death raining down from the skies, but she was already mostly prepared for death - unlike everyone else.  She has a single goal she already had in mind when she got on the bus.  And we're now along for her ride as she closes a final door or two behind her.

I do wonder if the original concept was to cast someone in a senior living home, or someone much older.  The busload of patients and puppet show make way more sense in that context.  But good luck getting kids to show up to see Grandma run from aliens.  

Still, Nyong'o is no chump as an actor, so - despite the questionable decisions - she was solid.  

It's a mixed bag.  

Oh, and, yeah, the movie mostly relies on jump scares.   Somehow piles of monsters falling down the sky?  The end of civilization?  Weirdly not scary.  (I know you're not supposed to wonder how and why creatures would evolve this way, and how it benefits them, and how they became star-faring, but you do have time to ponder these things.)

I dunno.  Maybe I've watched too many movies.  A post-crisis NYC is something maybe I've seen too many times.  

It really came down to the non-monster part of the film I liked, and I wondered if there's not a better movie to be made that's some art film about people at the end of the world, unable to talk for other reasons (he's from Lisbon!  She only knows Mandarin!) that couldn't have done this without all the distraction.

I liked the cat, though.  That's a solid cat.

Oh, and if you're a fan of Djimon Honsou (and we all should be here in 2024, he's good in everything) I guess he's in a different Quiet Place movie, because he shows up here for like five seconds, and I spent thirty minutes waiting for him to show up again to no avail.  

*Nothing like 200 seats knowing you couldn't hold your Dr. Pepper.