Quiet Please

Who would have expected that A Quiet Place: Day One (2024), a prequel to two recent monster/horror movies, would be so poetic? Maybe knowing that it starred Lupita Nyong'o would have been enough of a clue.

It starts with Nyong'o in hospice, with her emotional support cat, dying of cancer. She's depressed and sarcastic, sharing a poem in group therapy about how shitty the hospice is. The only thing keeping her going is transdermal fentanyl. Alex Wolff, who works at the hospice jollies her into coming to a show in nearby New York City. She agrees, if he promises that they can get pizza.

The show turns out to be a puppet show, which actually starts out nice, but gets dark. Nyong'o decides to wait outside, and Wolff shows up to let her know they have to get back to hospice imeediately. She argues, demanding her pizza, but the get everyone into the bus. And then they notice things falling from the sky.

It's the blind monsters from the other movies, showing up for the first time. They start tearing up everything in the city that makes noise (everything). Nyong'o is knocked out, and wakes up back in the theater, now a temporary refuge. Happily, her cat is still with her. So is Wolff, but he makes too much noise, and is killed. She also meets Djimon Hounsou, who we know makes it because he's in A Quiet Place 2. 

The government tells everyone to head for the South Street Seaport to be evacuated by sea - the monsters can swim, and the military have blown up the bridges. But Nyong'o doesn't want to be saved. She wants her pizza in Harlem. So she starts walking north, against the crowds. She picks up a traumatized English law student, Joseph Quinn. Although she tries to get him to join the evacuation, he just keeps tagging along with her - and her cat. 

So a lot of the movie is Nyong'o and Quinn traveling through an apocalyptic New York, in search of pizza. We learn that nyong'o was a poet, and her father played piano in Harlem. After the show, he'd take his daughter for pizza. Hence her quest. She and Quinn don't exactly bond, but they give each other comfort.

But the main thing I took away from the movie was Nyong'o's face, her eyes wide with terror and her hands over her mouth lest she scream. It's very Us. She is amazing in this, sensitive, doomed, in pain, with troubles deeper than the end of the world. Also, her cat, played by two cat actors, not CGI, was great, and she survives. The action scene that cat goes through! Nyong'o famously was afraid of cats and had to work very hard to get comfortable with them. And now she actually has a pet cat.

But I have to say, I sometimes felt like the monsters had a point. Maybe people should be quieter - not torn to pieces if they squeak, but hushed up a little. I can imagine a sequel in the far future, where mankind has become quiet and introspective and learns to live among the monsters.