A Quiet Place: Day One review – cat’s entertainment

A feline steals the show in Michael Sarnowski's serviceable entry into the sound-focused horror franchise.

Sometimes, when I’m watching my precious cat sleep, I wonder how she would fair in an apocalypse-level event. Margot’s qualifications are mixed: she possesses zero street smarts, having lived her entire life as an indoor cat (aside from when I take her outside on her lead, and the time I took her to the pub) but she did have two litters of kittens before I adopted her at eighteen months, so she’s survived a lot. She’s nimble and can fit into small spaces, but she is frequently clumsy and I have seen her fall off the sofa in her sleep multiple times. She is an adequate hunter of small insects and errant rodents, but exceptionally lazy, sometimes too lazy to get a ball out from under the sofa herself. After weighing the evidence I’d say her odds of survival are mixed – maybe higher if she can hitch her star to a savvy dog, Homeward Bound-style. I have no such concerns about Schnitzel and Nico, the stars of A Quiet Place: Day One, who share the role of a street-smart therapy cat named Frodo caught up in New York at the moment of the noise-hating aliens’ invasion.

The marketing materials around Michael Sarnoski’s prequel/threequel (the third film in the franchise kicked off by John Krasinski, though set before the events of the first film) may have tried to convince you that Lupita Ny’ongo and Joseph Quinn are the lead actors of this disaster thriller, and while the pair are incredibly winsome as terminally ill, terminally over it Sam and wet-eyed law studio Eric who follows her around like a lost puppy, make no mistake: this is Frodo’s film. With their big green eyes and determined stride, Schnitzel and Nico prowl the streets of the concrete jungle seemingly relatively unbothered by the spindly buggers wantonly murdering their way through the streets. Does Frodo the cat understand the gravity of the situation? At one point they stop to chase after a mouse, half-heartedly following it before getting distracted. Early on, Frodo nearly gives the location of a churchful of terrified survivors away to the aliens, because they want to go through a door that is shut. The attention afforded to classic cat behaviour is really spot on here – A Quiet Place: Day One might be a sci-fi thriller, but Frodo’s reaction to certain peril is grounded in the inalienable truth that a cat is going to do whatever a cat wants to do.

This makes Frodo’s role in the narrative all the more special. They’re Sam’s therapy cat, as we learn very early on she’s in the final stages of terminal cancer. When the world goes to shit, knowing death is coming one way or another, she decides to head home to Harlem, hoping to grab one last New York slice before she succumbs to the aliens or her illness. So Sam and Frodo set off uptown, where they run into Eric, a completely terrified British law student wearing a suit who tearfully explains his parents are in Kent and he’s very frightened. Sam reluctantly takes him under her wing. And Frodo, for their part, proves a soothing companion, grounding both Sam and Eric whenever the magnitude of their situation starts to get overwhelming, and proving much better at surviving an alien invasion than most of the supposedly higher life forms getting themselves decapitated left and right.

Anyone who has ever lived with a cat will tell you they cannot be made to do anything they don’t want to – a few years ago, my cousin’s cat, sick of living with two rambunctious toddlers, simply decided to up-sticks and move in with the elderly couple across the street – which makes the fact that Frodo chooses to stick with their human companions all the more remarkable. Frodo’s affection is earned, not automatic, and while sticking a cute animal into a perilous situation has been a blatant tactic to create audience investment for years, Sarnoski’s past work on the sublime porcine revenge drama Pig demonstrates his form for creating narratives which show the bond between humans and their animal companions.

In fact, it would have been a great opportunity to do a little world-building and provide some insight into the mysterious audio-anxious aliens which have been knocking about for three films now. There is one scene in which it’s suggested the extra-terrestrials may have their own food source and therefore be killing for sport, but stuck in the prequel format, Sarnoski is a bit limited in what he can do that makes sense within the context of the pre-established universe. The aliens aren’t very interesting as a result – there are more close-up shots of them in this film than we’ve seen, but as an antagonist limited to screeching and snatching people up (to be violently killed off-screen) they just aren’t engaging enough to sustain three films. At least the xenomorphs have a bit of get up and go about them.

You know who is engaging, though? Frodo the cat, who gamely tackles floating down a sewer in an I LOVE NEW YORK tote bag and being launched into the freezing Hudson River. Not since Jones, the noble ship cat aboard the Nostromo, has a feline endured so much in the face of active alien invasion. It’s smart of Sarnoski to find this hook, which ultimately speaks to the wider thrust of A Quiet Place: Day One – it’s a film about the necessity of holding onto small, precious things in the face of all-consuming fear. Whether that’s an authentic New York slice or your beloved, curiously bombproof cat.

Published 27 Jun 2024

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