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If you haven't seen or heard of the Quiet Place movies, they're about an invasion by aliens who are super-sensitive to sound, so you have to be very very quiet or they will eat you. This is basically a cool gimmick to build suspense; don't think about it too hard.
A Quiet Place: Day One is, obviously, a prequel about the day the aliens invade. (The previous movies occur years later). Much less obviously, it's about what's precious and worth saving when everything that we normally value is already lost: an unexpected melding of an Aliens-style action thriller with a bittersweet and heartwarming story of a dying woman, a terrified man, and the world's chillest cat.
Lupita Nyong'o is a poet dying of cancer in a hospice. She's understandably bitter and angry, only reluctantly attending an outing into New York City with other patients and a nurse when she's bribed with the promise of actually good pizza. She takes her beloved cat, Frodo. Needless to say, the trip is interrupted by an alien invasion. This part alone makes the movie worth seeing on the big screen - it's incredibly immersive and believable. After various events, she ends up with a very scared survivor who clings to her like she's a life raft, to her annoyance.
This movie is the epitome of "better than it had to be." All it really needed to be enjoyable was Lupita Nyong'o vs. sound-sensitive aliens. It gives us that, and it also gives us the best cat performance since the cat in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and it gives us a genuinely beautiful story about life, loss, and how we use the time left to us.
If you're worried about Frodo, don't worry, he's fine.
Lupita Nyong'o had a fear of cats when she started filming. She had to do cat therapy to shoot the movie. After it ended, she adopted a rescue cat.
A Quiet Place: Day One is, obviously, a prequel about the day the aliens invade. (The previous movies occur years later). Much less obviously, it's about what's precious and worth saving when everything that we normally value is already lost: an unexpected melding of an Aliens-style action thriller with a bittersweet and heartwarming story of a dying woman, a terrified man, and the world's chillest cat.
Lupita Nyong'o is a poet dying of cancer in a hospice. She's understandably bitter and angry, only reluctantly attending an outing into New York City with other patients and a nurse when she's bribed with the promise of actually good pizza. She takes her beloved cat, Frodo. Needless to say, the trip is interrupted by an alien invasion. This part alone makes the movie worth seeing on the big screen - it's incredibly immersive and believable. After various events, she ends up with a very scared survivor who clings to her like she's a life raft, to her annoyance.
This movie is the epitome of "better than it had to be." All it really needed to be enjoyable was Lupita Nyong'o vs. sound-sensitive aliens. It gives us that, and it also gives us the best cat performance since the cat in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and it gives us a genuinely beautiful story about life, loss, and how we use the time left to us.
If you're worried about Frodo, don't worry, he's fine.
Lupita Nyong'o had a fear of cats when she started filming. She had to do cat therapy to shoot the movie. After it ended, she adopted a rescue cat.