Summary

• A Quiet Place: Day One is not just about the first day of the alien invasion, but covers the first four days in a slower, character-focused narrative.
• The movie underdelivered on its core concept of showing the chaos and struggle of the apocalypse, focusing more on a love story than action.
• The story could have been condensed into a single action-packed day to create more immediacy and live up to its promise as an apocalyptic thriller.

A Quiet Place: Day One promised to be an action-packed prequel set on the first day of the alien invasion, but it’s not action-packed and it’s not set on one day. After the opening sequence of A Quiet Place Part II gave audiences a glimpse at the chaos of the day the aliens landed, A Quiet Place: Day One set out to stretch those apocalyptic thrills to a full feature-length movie. But writer-director Michael Sarnoski ended up delivering a much slower and more somber film than was promised by that tantalizing logline.

Sarnoski was more interested in telling a soulful love story in a unique setting than showing the carnage of sound-sensitive aliens ravaging the streets of New York City. There are some exhilarating set-pieces in A Quiet Place: Day One, but they’re fleeting, and few and far between – and most of them were spoiled in the trailers. For the most part, A Quiet Place: Day One is a character study. It’s more concerned with getting Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam to her favorite pizza place than showing the immediate aftermath of the alien invasion.

A Quiet Place: Day One Is Not Solely Set On The First Day Of The Alien Invasion

It's the first four days, and it skips past the first day quickly

The title of A Quiet Place: Day One suggests that it takes place entirely on the first day of the alien attack. But that’s not the case; it actually covers the first four days. And it’s only really the first act (or possibly even less) of the movie that is actually set on the first day of the invasion. Every time Sam and Joseph Quinn’s Eric hunker down in an abandoned apartment or a crumbling church to get some rest, the movie grinds to a halt and all the tension is flattened.

That was probably Sarnoski’s intention – he wanted to make a character-focused romance, not a big Hollywood action movie – but an entry in a post-apocalyptic horror franchise still has to deliver the goods for fans of the genre. And A Quiet Place: Day One doesn’t really deliver the goods. If Sam and Eric can survive for four whole days without really trying, then it doesn’t seem too difficult to survive in this alien-infested world. The first movie made it look harder to survive on Day 89 than the prequel makes it look to survive on Day 2.

A Quiet Place: Day One Underdelivered On Its Core Concept

It's still about people adjusting to life after the alien attack

The core concept of A Quiet Place: Day One, which set it apart from the previous two films, was to show the immediate aftermath of the aliens’ arrival. In the first two films, Earthlings have settled into the new world order and the human population has already been thinned out. A Quiet Place: Day One promised to show the unbridled chaos of the apocalypse and humanity’s struggle to wrap its head around a complete overnight change to the way the world works. But it didn’t really deliver on that intriguing premise.

In A Quiet Place: Day One, the story is still about people adjusting to life after the alien attack. Despite what its premise promised, the aliens’ attack in A Quiet Place: Day One doesn’t feel very immediate, so there’s time for civilians and the military to learn what to do and what not to do. Based on the premise, A Quiet Place: Day One should’ve thrown its characters in at the deep end. But Sam and everyone else have plenty of opportunities to figure out the aliens’ weaknesses and how to take advantage of them.

A Quiet Place: Day One was originally set to be written and directed by Jeff Nichols.

A Quiet Place: Day One Could've Told Its Entire Story In A Single Day

It could've all been truncated down to a single terrifying, action-packed day

The story of A Quiet Place: Day One could’ve been condensed into a single day. Sarnoski could’ve hit all the same beats without taking all those breathers that slowed the movie down. Sam keeps stopping for rest, but that’s only necessary if she’s planning for long-term survival, which she isn’t. It might not seem totally believable that Eric would fall for Sam in such a short space of time, but a four-day love story is just as implausible as a one-day love story, and it’s easily explainable that the traumatic event of the alien invasion bonded them faster than usual.

There are plenty of exciting moments in A Quiet Place: Day One. What let the movie down was all the slow, somber moments in between. By shortening the four-day timeline to a single day, Sarnoski could’ve created more of a feeling of immediacy (and actually lived up to the promise of the title). A Quiet Place: Day One isn’t a bad movie by any means, but it’s certainly not the action-packed apocalyptic thriller it promised to be.