By Steve Vertlieb: A Quiet Place: Day One is the third film in the successful horror franchise, and easily its best. While the isolated setting for the first two films lived up to their titles by stranding their hapless characters in a deserted farm community, giving substance and definition to the precarious circumstances surrounding their utter desolation, loneliness, and despair, this newest entry into the lucrative series opens up the experience to a wider, profoundly more dangerous exploration of global terror, by exposing the striking, naked vulnerability of the inhabitants of a major metropolis, powerless to avoid its own annihilation with literally nowhere to hide.

Day One is a deeply intense, exhilarating roller coaster ride, plunging the bright world of skyscrapers into a dark, nightmarish terror from which it cannot hide.  Deriving its simple, yet horrifying premise from such earlier alien encounters as Bird Box starring Sandra Bullock (Netflix, 2018) in which blindness, rather than unsettling noise, might preserve and protect the unwitting denizens of a world gone mad, as well as Cloverfield, in which a large city is devastated by the assault on civilians by a marauding dinosaur-like creature, satiating its hunger with destruction and genocide, Day One is an inescapable cinematic descent into unimaginable madness and incalculable terror. The initial mind-numbing invasion and infestation by creatures of unknown origin is eerily reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s traumatic opening sequence from Saving Private Ryan in which American soldiers land in the midst of deadly chaos and blinding confusion on the beaches of Omaha in Normandy.  

To its credit and calculated discernment, A Quiet Place never breaches the dignity either of its protagonists or development.  Rising above the temptations of endless cycles of cinematic blood and gore, Day One is brilliantly subtle in it its depiction of a city’s consuming journey into hell.  Director Michael Sarnoski utilizes admiral restraint that in lesser, more juvenile hands, might have degraded into a teenage blood bath.  This, by no means, diminishes or reduces the horrific intensity of the film’s shocking graphics and stunning special effects.

Humanity has shown an historic dread and blinding revulsion of multi-legged insects and creatures, perhaps, since the dawn of time and civilization.  Witness the shattering fear reflected by the inhabitants of “The Nostromo,” and paralyzing horror of the “xenomorph” in both Ridley Scott’s Alien, and James Cameron’s electrifying sequel, Aliens.  This brilliant visualization of a near humanoid insect remains the single most unique, unforgettably nightmarish creature in horror film history.  

Michael Sarnoski’s impeccable direction focuses on the humanity of its characters, rather than the poisonous temptations of needless violence and depravity. Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn easily capture their audience’s empathy and concern for their survival with both gritty and touching performances in their leading roles, while the eloquently suspenseful script by Sarnoski, John Krasinski (the sublimely gifted creator of the series), and Bryan Woods speaks volumes to the maturity and lack of pandering to a younger audience spoon fed on gore.  There’s even a tip of the hat to Ridley Scott’s original screenplay with Lupita Nyong’o’s singular affection for her cat, reminiscent not only of Sigourney Weaver as “Ripley,” but of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Blake Edwards’ Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It is this manner of humanistic scripting and performance that elevates the film loftily higher than its pretenders and imitations.

With grippingly tight editing by Andrew Mondshein and Gregory Plotkin, as well as rapturously stark, brooding atmosphere and cinematography by Pat Scola, this near Hitchcockian horror thriller is aided immeasurably by Alexis Grapsas’ subtle, yet compelling musical score.

A Quiet Place: Day One is a monumental “Monster” film whose humanity and compassion for its characters elevate this pervasive, compelling fright fest into far and away the most intense, imaginative thriller of the Summer.