Reviews
[REVIEW] ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ Is A Heart-Pounding Ride Driven By Heartfelt Drama
I’ll be blunt: if you didn’t enjoy A Quiet Place as much as everybody else who raved about it in 2018 or were underwhelmed by its sequel A Quiet Place Part II, this review is for you. And this review says you should see A Quiet Place: Day One, because in my eyes it is as close to a perfect installment as I’m expecting to get out of this franchise.
I’ll be blunt: if you didn’t enjoy A Quiet Place as much as everybody else who raved about it in 2018 or were underwhelmed by its sequel A Quiet Place Part II, this review is for you. And this review says you should see A Quiet Place: Day One, because in my eyes it is as close to a perfect installment as I’m expecting to get out of this franchise. Which, granted, sounds melodramatic, but stay with me.
A Quick Catch-up for A Quiet Place: Day One
If you haven’t caught up with what these films are about: nigh indestructible apex predator aliens drop from space. The good news is they’re blind and have no sense of smell; the bad news is, they have an incredible sense of hearing, and rip apart anything and everything that makes noise to shreds. A Quiet Place: Day One shows us the beginning of their attack on planet Earth, and follows New York native Sam, who returns to the city on the worst day possible as the creatures touch down. This film, of course, serves as a prequel to the other two films that came before it, but outside of one character we’ve seen before, Day One is a self-contained story, and I prefer it that way.
A Setting You Can Sink Your Teeth Into
Personally, this film is what I wanted from the jump. One of the problems I had with A Quiet Place was its greatest strength: its insistence on showing you how the Abbot Family have set up their homestead to be alien-proofed. I personally found that the locale of a mostly secured farm in the middle of Upstate New York traded off great set pieces for interesting world-building. Which is fine because I really liked that world-building, and the set pieces that were there, like the fireworks ruse and the grain silo trap and the marked steps, they had a charm to them. But I felt like I needed something meatier. I needed an environment that would make every second of existing in it feel like a risk.
And Day One does that handily, turning New York City into a brutal and unforgiving hunting ground. Your eyes end up darting around the frame, leaving you to wonder what errant piece of glass or object in view is going to make the noise that brings an eldritch stampede through to eviscerate everything in its path. Every street, every corner, and every subway station becomes a new dead zone of sound stalked by faceless nightmares, whose roars cut to the bone as fast as their teeth do. Which, on the topic of body shaking roars, you should be seeing this film in IMAX. It’s worth it just for the sound mixing and the foley work alone, which are some of the best I’ve heard all year.
The Best A Quiet Place’s Aliens Have Ever Looked
And let’s talk about the franchise’s unnamed aliens (I’ve seen some fans call them Death Angels because of an in-universe newspaper clipping, but I kind of prefer them as a nameless horde). You see them constantly throughout the whole film, Day One never lets that get stale. The special effects used to model them have certainly come a long way, with the textures of their mottled grey armor and the few bits of raw flesh we get to see underneath blow the original out of the water thanks to advances in digital SFX.
Even in plain sight, their uncomfortably fast movement makes them a gazelle mauling lion, a skulking trap door spider, and a man crushing rhinoceros all at once, changing how they approach on the fly to suit their hunt. It’s all about how director Michael Sarnoski frames them that makes this possible, with his use of lighting being supreme in silhouetting the monsters and making them more imposing. The opening sequence of the film reminded me a lot of The Mist for some kind of obvious reasons, but it’s mostly appropriate because Sarnoski really did manage to take these creatures which in previous films became very killable, and reinjected a lot of the intimidating horror they had to them when they were lurking around in the shadows as the new and indisputable top of the food chain.
That being said, the creature design itself does look a bit goofy in some wide shots, with one particular shot meant to show the scale of their attack being particularly odd; these instances are far and few between, with them looking great for most of the runtime.
Lupita Nyong’O and Joseph Quinn Bring Next-Level Performances
But what does all of this alien fear amount to if you’re not invested in the people on the ground, the everyday person thrust into the apocalyptic alien invasion? And that was where I was most surprised with A Quiet Place: Day One, because it certainly has some of my favorite horror leads of the year, and given the audience reactions I’ve heard, Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) and her unlikely friend Eric (Joseph Quinn) are going to be horror fan favorites for a good long while.
Lupita Nyong’o is so unbelievably good in this, playing the beleaguered Sam whose already terrible life kind of just spins down the drain even faster with the invasion of Earth. But her struggles, her character motivation, and her character development over the course of an engrossing 100 minutes are so perfectly arranged and executed that she feels real to an uncanny level. Joseph Quinn deserves praise as well for the physical aspect of his acting talents, because there’s this palpable feeling to his pain in this movie that I couldn’t get over; his shuddering and panic, his unrest and terror, it’s all played with a full-tilt intensity and fully trained expertise. Nyong’o and Quinn’s chemistry amplifies their natural talents to an unbelievable level; they make you feel a genuine bond between these characters, united by their suffering, that makes for a compelling watch.
The way I really know I was totally absorbed by Day One is that by a third of the way through, I felt fairly confident that I knew exactly how it was going to play out. And while I was right, there still wasn’t a single moment where I wasn’t on the edge of my seat just watching it go that way. Because like with many great things, it’s about the journey more than the destination. A Quiet Place: Day One is a journey that’s at turns heart-pounding, with moments that will leave you dead silent– but it’s a true rarity, and the real reason you need to see it, is how heartfelt it becomes, and how it sticks with your emotionally.
There are countless subgenres within subgenres for horror, and one that feels underutilized is workplace horror. Unless you’re one of the lucky few, most people wake up at some point during the day, go to work, and then come home. It’s one of the few things in life that’s nearly unavoidable. While there are countless real-life examples of workplace violence, seeing exaggerated forms of it in film can still be fun. When I pitched covering The Belko Experiment for this month, I actually thought I was pitching Joe Lynch’s Mayhem. I soon found out how incorrect I had been, but figured I’d go along with it anyway.
Mike Milch (John Gallagher Jr.) and 79 of his coworkers are locked inside the towering building they come to work in every day in Bogotá, Colombia. They’re given simple instructions: murder two coworkers within the next half hour. When they fail that task, coworkers’ heads start blowing up left and right. When they’re given the next task, kill 30 people in two hours, they take it…a little more seriously.
The Belko Experiment’s Brutal Premise Sets Up High Stakes
Written by James Gunn and directed by Wolf Creek creator Greg McLean, The Belko Experiment is a painfully by-the-numbers film that offers little more than a handful of entertaining kills. Its futile attempts at commentary regarding work/life balance or just how bad “faceless” upper management is fall so flat it’s comical. Nothing like multi-millionaire James Gunn telling me how awful it is to have to work a real job for a living. Great work. And its one-dimensional characters do little more than create a slight sigh of relief when they’re dispatched without regard.
A singular attempt at cleverness is broached from the beginning when we see a colony of ants in an ant farm on someone’s desk. Oh, look at that, these workers are nothing more than mindless ants! But any attempt at following that slightly clever idea is quickly thrown away. At one point, Barry Norris (Tony Goldwyn), the big boss in the office, attempts to group up who should and shouldn’t be killed; who has the most value outside of work. Gunn had the perfect opportunity to make Barry a deep and more sinister antagonist. If Barry had grouped people into sets from most to least profitable for the company, we would have something. It would show that Barry is a forward-thinking villain who is trying to suck up to the people who get paid even MORE than him!
Missed Opportunities for a Smarter Corporate Villain
I’ll do you one better. After all of that, what if the bad guys that Barry recruited to help him cull his subordinates realized they were just pawns in the game of Big Business? So then they attempt to repent by killing Barry in the hopes that they can find a common means of escape from this hell? Why is there zero attempt at making an interesting story other than this shitty, watered-down Battle Royale with people we don’t give a shit about? Instead of anything interesting, we’re just given a group of baddies who try to get into the security office’s gun safe. The only reason we’re slightly scared of the “bad guys” is because they’re bad guys.
The only slightly interesting performances we get are from David Dastmalchian and Adria Arjona, even if it might be a fluke. As someone who is a fan of Greg McLean and the Wolf Creek series, something just felt disconnected about nearly every aspect of The Belko Experiment. I’ve brought it up before that sometimes it’s okay to have a film that doesn’t tell a great story as long as the kills can carry some of the weight. But to say this film has a story is laughable, and that carries over to how flat this film looks.
Skip The Belko Experiment and Watch Mayhem Instead
It’s weird how sour this film left me. When I was watching it, I found myself grimacing at some of the kills. And I didn’t vehemently dislike it as much as this review would suggest. But as I sat there and thought longer, I just couldn’t wrap my head around what anyone sees in this. Mayhem is an all-around better film that tackles this same subject but in a much better way. So if you ever decide to sit down and watch The Belko Experiment, maybe go watch Mayhem on Shudder instead.
Would it be a month of coverage on Horror Press if I didn’t bring up at least one aughts film? I know the curator of all things Horror Press, James-Michael, is shaking his fists at the sky and cursing the fact that he approved me covering The Hitcher. Of all the remakes that were so pervasive throughout the aughts, The Hitcher is one that slipped completely under my radar. And that’s a damn shame. It wouldn’t be until I found a DVD copy at Bookoff that I finally got the opportunity to watch it. Hot damn, the critics really got it wrong here.
The Hitcher: A Road Trip Turned Nightmare
Jim Halsey (Zachary Knighton) and his girlfriend Grace Andrews (Sophia Bush) are on a road trip to Lake Havasu in Jim’s gorgeous Oldsmobile 442. An unfortunate run-in with a mysterious hitchhiker, John Ryder (Sean Bean), Jim and Grace find themselves in a fight for life and death. Only, John isn’t their only concern. With the 5-0 hot on their tails, Jim and Grace must escape from a psychopathic man with a death wish and the hot-tempered, hot-faced Lieutenant Esteridge (Neal McDonough). As the odometer grows, so does the body count.
The Hitcher is one of those remakes that does not have the approval of the original’s lead, Rutger Hauer. Which is astounding to me. Sure, the original is good. But it doesn’t set itself apart from the crowd too much. Rutger Hauer’s John is slightly more reserved, and while he has an edge to him, I don’t necessarily find him overly menacing. (Don’t kill me.) Sean Bean’s John Ryder, on the other hand, is furiously terrifying. There’s no question that there are tons of issues with the Platinum Dunes remake, though, for me, the pros significantly outweigh the cons.
Jim Halsey Falls Flat
The biggest issue is the character of Jim Halsey. I love how the roles of Jim and Grace are swapped from the original film. It brings an updated, modern edge to the film and is a great way to throw audiences who have seen the original. Though I can imagine the hyper-masculine fans of the original were not too happy with that. When it was decided to swap the roles of the characters, it seems like any character depth for Jim was thrown out of the window. I think Zachary Knighton is a wonderful actor who does the best with what he has, but he doesn’t have enough to work with. Writers Eric Red, Jake Wade Wall, and Eric Bernt updated the film with tons of epic scenarios and moments, while seemingly forgetting to make the supposed lead of the film interesting.
On top of cardboard Jim, the inciting police incident just feels very forced. Grace runs into a diner, covered in blood, after she and Jim found a family butchered by John. Someone from the diner calls the police, which leads to Jim and Grace being arrested and charged with murder. Whether or not that’s supposed to be commentary on rural police doesn’t matter because it completely fails to do anything other than forcibly push the story forward.
Besides that? I hate to say, but I don’t have many issues with The Hitcher.
Soundtrack and Atmosphere: A High-Octane Experience
First and foremost, The Hitcher’s soundtrack is incredible. We start the film with Move Along by The All-American Rejects. Talk about a shot of adrenaline. And the greatest needle drop in all of aughts horror history is Nine Inch Nails’s Closer during the film’s most wild car chase. It’s hard not to get lost in this film when the music kicks in.
What really sells this film is how intensely they handle the violence and the film’s gorgeous chase scenes. It’s no Death Proof, but these scenes are miles above the Fast movies that were out at this time. In a day and age where chase scenes are overly produced, badly edited, and just plain boring, The Hitcher manages to infuse horror and action in a way that probably won’t be seen again. Watching films like The Hitcher makes me sad for the state of modern cinema. The Hitcher wasn’t made to win scores of Oscars; it was made by people passionate about telling a badass, harrowing story (minus Jim). And they greatly excel at that.
The Hitcher Is a Misunderstood Cult Favorite
The Hitcher falls in line with my running theory of post-9/11 ultra violence. We were a nation scared of what happened, what was happening, and what seemed to be on the horizon–The Hitcher bottles that fear and anger, packaging it into a nasty piece of genre. Sean Bean and Sophia Bush are an on-screen match made in heaven. They wade through harsh lighting, thick film grain, and buckets of blood to deliver a film that critics and audiences unfairly panned. While audiences may have moved along, I sure didn’t. I want to exist in a world of nothing but aughts genre films, but am forced to live in a world of elevated horror. Le sigh.
