A Quiet Place: Day One’s protagonist Sam, played by Lupita Nyong’o, proves herself to be much smarter than John Krasinski’s character from the previous films almost immediately. Whereas the Krasinski-starring originalA Quiet Placewas set more than a year into the alien invasion,A Quiet Place: Day Onekicks off on the day the aliens landed. In the first two movies, the characters are well-acquainted with the aliens and their weaknesses and how to survive post-invasion. But inA Quiet Place: Day One, the characters have no idea what’s going on and have to figure it out.
Sam put an interesting spin on the usual tropes of post-apocalyptic stories. In most post-apocalyptic movies and TV shows, the heroes are determined to survive the end-times. But Sam is already terminally ill before the aliens arrive, so she’s not particularly interested in survival. She just wants to make it across town and enjoy her favorite pizza one last time before the aliens get her. But even though she has no interest in surviving, her survival instincts are proven to be much sharper thanKrasinski’s character Lee Abbotton just the first day of the attack.
Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam Figures Out A Quiet Place’s Water Sound Trick After Only One Day
It took the Abbotts over a year to figure out the water trick
Inthe originalA Quiet Place, Lee takes his son into the woods to show him a neat trick he’s figured out. If they go near a rushing waterfall, then they can make all the noise they want, because the sound of the water masks the sound of their voice. It’s a smart idea that gives them an outlet to make sound in a world where breaking the silence is a death sentence. Butit seems as though Lee just figured this out, and that was more than 400 days after the aliens landed, so it took a while.
A Quiet Place: Day Onewas written and directed by Michael Sarnoski.
InA Quiet Place: Day One, on the other hand, Sam figures out the water sound trick almost immediately. When she finds a couple of frightened kids who have lost their parents, she takes them to a fountain to talk to them over the sound of the water. Whereas it took Lee more than a year to deduce that he could use the sound of rushing water to cover up the sound of his voice,Sam picked up on that within a single day. Clearly, Sam is much better at this survival thing than Lee.
Sam’s A Quiet Place: Day One Plan Uses Sound Better Than Lee In A Quiet Place
Sam uses sound to distract the aliens without just screaming at the top of her lungs
In the climactic scenes of bothA Quiet PlaceandA Quiet Place: Day One, the protagonists use sound to distract the aliens and save people they care about. But Sam uses the sound in a much smarter way than Lee did.Lee can’t think of any other way to distract the alien besides yelling, which attracts the alien right to him and costs him his life.Lee makes a triumphant sacrificeand it proves that he did care about his kids when they were doubting his love. But Sam proves he didn’t have to get himself killed.
A Quiet Place: Day One Isn’t The Movie It Promised To Be
A Quiet Place: Day One promised an action-packed prequel set on the first day of the invasion, but it’s not action-packed and it’s not set on one day.
Sam similarly uses sound to draw the aliens away while Eric and Frodo jump into the river and swim out to a nearby boat. But rather than making the noise herself and drawing the aliens to her,Sam smashes a bunch of car windows. As she breaks the windows, she keeps moving, so the aliens follow the sounds, and by the time they get there, she’s gone.Sam didn’t even want to survive and she came up with a less deadly way to distract the aliensthan Lee did.
Sam’s resourcefulness and quick thinking make Lee look like less of a survivalist expert. It makes it seem like he survived for over 400 days because of luck alone, not because he outsmarted all the dead people. But it’s better for audiences that way. It would feel boring and repetitive if viewers had to watch Sam make all the same mistakes that the Abbotts did, copying all the same trial-and-error story beats seen in the previous movies.
Sam is as smart and savvy about the world ofA Quiet Placeas the audience is. In theory, it makes Lee look a bit less smart, and it makes Sam seem unrealistically intuitive, like she’s as familiar with the franchise lore as fans are. But it ultimately madeA Quiet Place: Day Onea more engaging viewing experience that kept the audience on their toes.
A Quiet Place: Day One
Cast
A Quiet Place: Day One is a spin-off of the A Quiet Place franchise conceived by John Krasinski. The film is set at the beginning of the invasion as humanity scrambles to survive, before the events of the original film, with Lupita Nyong’O leading the cast, directed by Michael Sarnoski.
