After the massive success of the first two A Quiet Place movies, John Krasinski made the decision to take a break from directing the franchise and produce a spinoff based on the sci-fi/horror world. The latest installment in the series is Michael Sarnoski’s A Quiet Place: Day One, which comes from a story that the writer/director developed alongside Krasinski. The story is unique in that it's set in New York City and solely focuses on the beginning of the alien invasion that brought blind and deadly monsters to earth. For the most part, the spinoff operates separately from its predecessors, but it does nod to the previous films And Sarnoski explained to CinemaBlend just how all of those links came together.
When our own Corey Chichizola sat down with Michael Sarnoski to talk about the one of the latest 2024 movie releases, the filmmaker spoke about including references to the movie that started it all. As Sarnoski explained, there variables that needed to be considered when placing "little homages" in his movie:
There was always this feeling of people know the rules of this world, and they kind of have seen them be learned before and seen them develop. So you want to see some of that, but you also don’t want to make the movie about that to the point that it becomes ‘Well, why are we just watching the same stuff again?’ So it’s nice to do little homages to that and kind of reference it, but not make too much of a meal of it that it just feels like ‘What’s the point?’ So it was always finding that balance. There are definitely moments that are supposed to conjure your memories of the previous films, to allow us to go somewhere else or go one step farther.
There are several cool easter eggs throughout the flick. For example, during the movie, Lupita Nyong’o’s character, Samira, hides in a fountain to avoid the creatures. This very much harkens back to a key sequence in the first movie where John Krasinski’s Lee Abbott and his son, Marcus, go to a waterfall in order to talk to each other and get away from the constant state of complete silence they must live in in order to survive.
A Quiet Place Timeline Explained, Including What We Know About Day One
As Michael Sarnoski shared, he found that it was important to strike a “balance” between paying homage to the first movie and not repeating all the rules of the world that have previously been established in the first two movies. The original started with day 89 of the invasion before jumping to day 472, which is where the core story takes off. The first two installments take place in the countryside, so Day One really amps up the thrills be moving the action to New York City, which is one of the noisiest places in the world. (That info comes from NY Mag’s reporting of record noise complaints from its citizens.) As nerve-wracking as that seems, it definitely adds to the stakes and energy of this latest entry in the franchise.
This time around, Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o leads the cast as a terminally ill woman, who finds herself in an intense survival situation when aliens begin to invade the city. Also among the cast are Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsou and Eliane Umuhire. Day One has left critics split over how it adds to the franchise overall. And the A Quiet Place: Day One review from our own Eric Eisenberg expressed less-than-positive sentiments. Though based on Rotten Tomatoes, audiences mostly seem to dig it.
It's not easy to build upon an established franchise organically and put your own stamp on it. However, it seems Michael Sarnoski was able to do that and use a cerebral approach when doing so. And it makes sense because, after all, you can't move forward without acknowledging the past.
You can check out A Quiet Place: Day One for yourself in theaters now! And stream the first two films using a Paramount+ subscription.
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