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

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.