A woman named Sam finds herself trapped in New York City during the early stages of an invasion by alien creatures with ultra-sensitive hearing.

‘A Quiet Place’ is one of the most successful (and for my money, one of the best) horror movies of recent years and John Krasinski followed it up with a sequel that was pretty, pretty good as well. It’s no surprise another movie has been made in this universe, with ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’, much as the title suggests, taking us back to the day when these sound attracted monsters arrived on earth. Instead of the rural setting of upstate New York from the original two movies, this movie places us right in the heart of New York City to show us what was happening in an urban environment.

Aside from Djimon Hounsou, no characters overlap with the prior two movies and we see this story almost entirely through the character of Sam (Lupita Nyongo’o), a terminally ill woman who gets caught up in the invasion while on a day trip into the city from her hospice. She is brilliant and carries the movie, ably assisted by her cat Frodo who accompanies her every step of the way. The story follows a similar template to other movies of this ilk, in that our survivor encounters various other individuals on her quest for survival, learning a little more about humanity as she goes along. One thing that struck me while watching was that what I like about this series is that it is a relatively rare creature feature where the baddies are actually the monsters as opposed to other humans, and I particularly enjoyed the bond Sam forms with a man she meets called Eric (Joseph Quinn).

I’d say this is less scary than the other two movies in the series, albeit it is undoubtedly tense, and I thought director Michael Sarnoski (previously made the great Nic Cage film ‘Pig’) crafted a strong portrayal of post-apocalyptic NYC with characters that are written well enough that I cared about their fate. ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ is a more than solid prequel and worthwhile entry to this series, aided by a stirring lead performance from Lupita Nyongo’o who crafts a character worth rooting for.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Michael Sarnoski

Starring: Lupita Nyongo’o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff and Djimon Hounsou

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt13433802/