“A Quiet Place: Day One” Forgets The Importance Of Self-Sacrifice In Survival Stories

The first time I watched A Quiet Place, I was accompanied by my newly-minted brother-in-law – my sister didn’t want to risk the jump scares. Fifteen minutes into the movie, we regretted the noisy bucket of popcorn we had purchased, and we left the film in a stunned silence. He reflected on the virtues of fatherhood which he would soon need to practice in real life; I reflected on the strength of motherhood which so few movies and stories really show. Every now and then a movie manages to strike all the right chords, and A Quiet Place is such a one.

As a fan of the original film, I was eager for A Quiet Place: Day One, which promises to depict the moments when the world was first invaded by noise-attracted monsters (called Death Angels). Despite following a new set of characters, there was much I enjoyed about the latest Quiet Place film. It’s still scary without being gruesome, and the film’s cinematography and score are much more beautiful than you would expect from an apocalyptic film.

But A Quiet Place: Day One isn’t a completely satisfying watch because behind the film’s moments of beauty and fine acting performances, it lacks the deep truths of the original film. Instead, it paints a bleak picture about the state of modern men and women – and all the ways in which we would be woefully unprepared for a true crisis.

*Shhhh, there are spoilers ahead*

Why We Loved A Quiet Place

When the original A Quiet Place was released in 2018, it was a shock runaway hit. Though in retrospect, no one should have been surprised. The film follows the Abbott family, who have survived a global attack of Death Angels – monsters which will come to hunt you if they hear you make a noise. The Abbotts are haunted by the tragic death of their youngest child. When Evelyn becomes pregnant, she and her husband Lee must prepare for a safe way to bring their child into the world – and keep the rest of them safe in the process.

A Quiet Place is more than a great thriller – it’s a beautiful ode to the way families need each other and ought to work together. Featuring Emily Blunt in one of her finest performances and John Krasinski (Blunt’s real-life husband) as the family’s self-sacrificing mother and father, A Quiet Place depicts the unique strengths of femininity and masculinity, without ever straying into sentimentality.

Two years later, Blunt reprised her role for A Quiet Place Part II, which follows Evelyn Abbott’s journey with her children to seek help. They come across their old neighbor Emmett (Oscar winner Cillian Murphy), who is mourning the recent loss of his wife. When the older daughter Regan decides to trace a mysterious radio signal, Emmett must break out of his isolation to help find her and bring her back safely.

While the two films have different narrative approaches, there is a strong common theme between the two: the unbreakable tie between love and self-sacrifice. Lee Abbott must make the ultimate sacrifice to keep his children safe, while Evelyn chooses to suffer to bring her new child into the world. Following in the footsteps of their parents in the second film, Regan and then her brother Marcus begin to make their own sacrifices for the good of those around them. Love cannot exist without self-sacrifice, and in the world of A Quiet Place, it’s what makes life worthwhile in the long run.

A Quiet Place: Day One Isn’t Sure Why Life Is Valuable in the First Place

Where A Quiet Place introduces the audience to a young family we can immediately root for, A Quiet Place: Day One introduces us to Samira (Lupita Nyong’o) – a sick, bristly New Yorker who only seems to care about her cat, Frodo. Samira lives in hospice (sick with cancer, as we discover later), and she is angry against the world because of it. She writes bitter poetry, is brusque and harsh to her hospice nurse and friend Reuben (Alex Wolff), and in general tries to keep everyone at arm's length.

Samira is a hard person to like, and it’s not until several scenes into the film, when she attends a puppet show which brings her to tears, that the character lets her guard down enough to let the audience in. This is no fault of Nyong’o’s performance, which gives the character’s harshness an underlying warmth which the script itself does not require. But being emotionally held at a distance still creates a problem for the audience. When Samira begins her journey, not to safety, but to a pizza place she knows in Harlem for one last piece of pizza, we can’t help but wonder why we really care if she makes it to the pizza place in the end. 

The film does try to transcend the bleak modernity of its setting in a few moments, as in Samira’s experience at the puppet show or a moving scene inside a still-standing St. Patrick’s Cathedral. But these scenes aren’t enough to resolve the real struggle of A Quiet Place: Day One. At its core, Samira doesn’t see a reason why life is inherently valuable, and her attitude muddies the film’s survival plotline. If life isn’t inherently valuable in some way, then what really is the point of surviving the apocalypse?

This confusion is drawn into sharp focus by the film’s ending. Samira causes noise while her new friend Eric (Joseph Quinn) and Frodo the cat escape to a boat on the river Hudson, barely missing a stampede of Death Angels. Based on what we’ve seen in previous films, this is the moment you would expect one character to sacrifice themselves for another – and if Samira were going to die, this would have been the moment for it to happen. But instead of losing her life while saving her friend, Samira is able to avoid the Death Angels.

It is not until later in the film, long after Samira has had her goodbye pizza and a chance to say goodbye to the Harlem she loved, that she decides to end her life on her own terms. As Eric reads a farewell note Samira left in his jacket, we watch her listen to one final jazzy rendition of “I’m Feeling Good” on headphones. But then Samira unplugs the headset, blaring the music and drawing the Death Angels to her – effectively committing suicide rather than die slowly of the cancer eating her alive. 

It’s meant to be a triumphant moment – but is it? Is life most fulfilling when we invest in deep relationships with others that require self-sacrifice, or is it most fulfilling when we live it on our own terms whatever the cost? A Quiet Place: Day One eventually lands on the latter. Its ending is meant to be a stirring victory for individualism and agency – but it’s a hollow victory at best.

Are Modern Men Ready for a Crisis? Not in A Quiet Place: Day One

Halfway through the film’s runtime, Samira’s cat wanders down the street and laps water from a flooded subway. Bursting to the surface (rather too noisily, I couldn’t help but notice) emerges the film’s male protagonist, Eric (Joseph Quinn). In shock, Eric follows the cat to where he meets Samira, weeping noiselessly as they make their way down the devastated streets of New York.

Eric is a picture of everything that is wrong with the soft boy persona. Eric doesn’t just spend a large portion of his first scenes crying – he spends at least the first half of his scenes following Samira around helplessly, unable to make his own decisions or even break down a door effectively. It’s only when Samira gets too sick to be their leader that Eric begins to take any responsibility for their survival. But his time of leadership is short-lived, as the film’s climax is orchestrated by Samira. Eric is the passive agent who gets saved.

It’s a bleak picture of modern masculinity and certainly not one that shows what men ought to be. Truly masculine men take an active role in their surroundings, and when a crisis occurs, they step in to protect others. They don’t cower to save themselves. Since Eric is the film’s primary male character, it’s easy to feel that in this newest Quiet Place, the men are there to be rescued and little else.

This isn’t to say that all the male characters in A Quiet Place: Day One are weak and helpless. Samira’s hospice nurse and friend Reuben repeatedly puts himself in danger to keep Samira safe early on in the film and ultimately makes a sacrifice to keep everyone sheltering in place safe.

Djimon Hounsou also reprises his role from A Quiet Place: Part II, this time with a name: Henri. Samira meets Henri early in the film at a puppet show, which he is attending with his wife and young son. After the Death Angels attack, she meets Henri again while hiding in the theater’s basement. During the course of the film, Henri fights to protect his son’s life, doing whatever is necessary to keep it quiet for his son’s escape.

Though I doubt this was the film’s intention, A Quiet Place: Day One shows how a world of soft men is unprepared for moments of crisis. Boys like Eric aren’t likely to make it to Day 471 because they haven’t exercised their masculine gift for staying strong and protecting others. Is it a depressing picture of our society? Absolutely. But maybe that’s part of why really masculine men are coming back into style. 

Closing Thoughts

A Quiet Place: Day One is a well-made film, full of the same jump scares and sequences of silence we loved about the original film. But it lacks the emotionally satisfying stories of the Abbott family which we loved from the originals. Following the prickly Samira and the effeminate Eric as they try to survive a silent New York City, we can’t help but wonder if there’s a reason that only mothers and fathers, like Evelyn and Lee Abbott, make it past Day One of the apocalypse.

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