A Quiet Place: Day One, review: a bold, innovative, heart-in-throat summer chiller

Far too many blockbusters these days get bogged down in exposition, so there is something to be said for a big summer film whose entire premise can be captured by a terrified man grabbing its heroine by the shoulders and saying “shhh”.

Said moment occurs roughly 15 minutes into A Quiet Place: Day One – although for those familiar with the franchise, even this is probably surplus to requirements. As in the 2018 and 2020 instalments, blind aliens with pin-sharp hearing and pincers are ravaging the Earth, making steak tartare of any human who emits a sound. The original two chapters centred on a young family, led by John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, surviving in the wilderness – but this third wipes the slate, and in doing so offers a radical new treatment of the series’ strong but arguably played-out concept.

Because following a brief scene-setting prologue, there are perhaps two further scenes in the entire film in which dialogue plays a meaningful role.

Beyond that, all communication comes in the form of pointing, anxious and/or petrified looks, and the odd note, hastily scribbled. And of course that expository shhh too, delivered by Djimon Hounsou, whom we briefly catch en route to the events of A Quiet Place: Part II.

The new setting is New York, where Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam and Joseph Quinn’s Eric, a poet/cancer patient and law student respectively, get caught up in the initial chaos and carnage when the aliens arrive. So too does Sam’s pet cat Frodo, who has a larger and more complex role than any other human in the film. (Fortunately it’s not a big miaower.)

This trio do their best to survive from moment to moment in the wreckage of Manhattan: that’s all there is for them to do, and all the film cares about besides. A Quiet Place: Day One was written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, of 2021’s excellent Nicolas Cage truffle-hunting thriller Pig, and it feels like the best possible result of a conversation that began “if we’re really going to do another of these, we’d better make it worthwhile.”

And they did. The film about as bold and innovative as a third franchise entry can be, which may not be desperately, but is more than enough to keep viewers’ hearts at constant throat altitude.

Structurally it feels less like a film than a great video game, with a setting that slowly evolves from scene to scene (or perhaps level to level) and a constant, itchily compelling sense of progress being made. Nyong’o is above-and-beyond outstanding here – as previously seen in Jordan Peele’s Us, expressions of gut-wrenching terror are a forte. But British rising star Quinn holds his own impressively, and a late scene between the two in a deserted bar is so touchingly and delicately played, you almost forget the man-eating aliens scuttling around outside.

As before, the act of watching with an audience is part of the fun, with each pin-drop-silent sequence playing as a challenge to viewers to maintain their collective hush at all costs. This is the pleasant surprise of the summer so far. See it. Don’t bring crisps.

15 cert, 100 mins