With parts of post-apocalyptic alien invasion, home invasion, thriller, and horror genre elements, “A Quiet Place” was definitely a surprise franchise. Directed by John Krasinski and released in 2018, the Hitchcockian thriller about aliens who have invaded Earth and fed off sound, forcing the world to remain as silent as possible, was a smash upon its arrival that year and quickly spawned an unexpected franchise. “A Quiet Place Part II” arrived in 2020 with the remaining cast from the first film: Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, plus Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou. And while fans expect a third film in the series to discover what becomes of the Abbott family, the franchise has pivoted to a prequel for “A Quiet Place: Day One.”
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First off, John Krasinski isn’t involved as a writer/director, but it is based on his story idea. Krasinski devised ambitious plans to create a world where different “A Quiet Place” stories could be told worldwide and in different eras of this alien invasion. And that’s precisely what ‘Day One’ is, a prequel that, as the title suggests, tells the story of the initial day the assault occurred, but changing the location of the farming outskirts to the metropolis of New York.
The film stars Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn (“Stranger Things”), Alex Wolff, and, with some connective tissue to the franchise, Djimon Hounsou’s character from ‘Part II.’ Taking place before the first film, a woman named Sam (Nyong’o) must survive an invasion in New York City by bloodthirsty alien creatures with ultrasonic sound hearing.
“This notion of a quiet New York is one that will arrest many,” Lupita Nyong’o told EW earlier this year. “It’s an impossible thing to imagine…. When you live there, you block out all the sounds quite naturally. You just forget to hear the sound. I realized how hard it would be to survive in a world that required you to be silent in that particular city.”
For “A Quiet Place: Day One,” Krasinski hands off the reins to indie filmmaker Michael Sarnoski, known for the subdued Nicolas Cage-starring drama “Pig.” What’s in store for the film exactly? Well, a new featurette pulls back the curtain a little bit and explores and explains how the New York setting makes for a movie that will feel very different from the previous, mostly isolated and desolate ‘A Quiet Place’ films.
“A Quiet Place: Day One” opens in theaters June 28. Watch the new featurette to get a taste of what the horror thriller will have in store this time around.
