Ask anybody for recommendations on the top horror movies from the recent years and most often than not, A Quiet Place (2018) will be included in it. The 2018 film starring John Krasinski and Emily Blunt was a fresh concept for many of us and it did deliver the scares. And six years later, we are given the prequel that gives us an idea on what happened THAT day. Now in A Quiet Place: Day One, us horror fans, will experience fear and get to feel being clueless while fighting to survive from the unknown. Here is my take on the film:
Last June 25th, Paramount Pictures Philippines and SM Cinema, invited me to the advanced screening of A Quiet Place: Day One at the IMAX Theatre in SM Megamall. It is honestly one of the movies that I have had on my radar since I watched the trailers. So come the premiere night, I was ecstatic. The movie started and I have never been happier as a fan.
The movie’s premise is pretty simple: we get to follow the seemingly ordinary life of Samira (Lupita Nyong’o). The would have been boring trip of her hospice to New York City was turned completely when the city was put under siege by aliens. Shocked and lost, she only had one motivation and that is to return to the place she grew up in in Harlem and get a slice of pizza. On her mini journey, she encounters a transfer student from England, Eric (Joseph Quinn). They kept each other company along with her service cat just to somehow make sense of the mess they were in.
In hindsight, the story is really simple, comical even at some points. But the direction of it gave the movie such gravitas that had me holding my breath at times. The tightness of the script and how it decided to just focus on the two characters was a great decision in order for us to actually care for them and their mini journey. Comparisons to the first two films are inevitable and that is fair given that this is a prequel and I am going to bet that one of those comments would be about the action being much tamer and fewer. Personally, that is not a bad thing at all. I love how the movie still had some emotional depth despite introducing completely new characters. BUT that is not to say that the action sequences on Day One are not giving. In fact, the city under siege scenes were so well-made that I actually feared for myself that what if it happens locally, say in Ayala Avenue in Makati City.
A Quiet Place: Day One is the Cloverfield of the series. It gives us a taste of what it was like when the aliens first arrived. We were left wondering, clueless, yet still had the struggle to survive despite being lost and alone. As if you need more reasons to catch this on the big screen, let me drop these: stunning performances specially by Lupita Nyong’o and the eerie transition to silence of New York City.
A Quiet Place: Day One is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
