Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

A Quiet Place: Day One Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 1, 2024

In just two films, A Quiet Place and its sequel have established the franchise as one of the best in Hollywood, taking a simple gimmick -- aliens invaders who hunt on sound -- and crafting two of the most suspenseful, purposeful, technically excellent, and very human films of the past few decades. Paramount has unsurprisingly, and rightly, released this third film, A Quiet Place: Day One, a prequel of sorts that take viewers back to the beginning of the alien invasion and follows the story from the perspective of a cancer patient struggling to survive in the midst of the the chaos and unknown. The film, in a way, takes the approach of Fear the Walking Dead by taking an established genre icon and offering a new look at story origins from a different perspective. Unlike Fear, however, this one works, and it works wonderfully, in large part because the material is so rich and has not yet worn out its welcome, but also because it’s a legitimately good story with compelling characters, slick filmmaking, and tangible terror. A Quiet Place has not at all quietly become the best alien invasion and disaster franchise in recent years and easily one of the best of its kind, ever.

Sam (Lupita Nyong'o) is a terminally ill cancer patient living out her last days in excruciating pain. Only some medicine and her therapy cat, Frodo, are keeping her alive. Her hospice nurse, Reuben (Alex Wolff), convinces her to come out on the town for a night at a marionette show in a city theater. Sam also wants pizza; it might the her last. The evening out is interrupted when alien invaders descend and wreck havoc on the city, killing countless people along the way. Sam barely escapes but is knocked unconscious, only to awaken to find herself in a roomful of hushed people back at the theater; the aliens hunt on sound, not on sight. Sam finds herself constantly on the stealthy run, trying her best to survive. She soon meets with Eric (Joseph Quinn) an English law student. Thew two form an unlikely bond in an effort to reach the safety of boats taking survivors out of the city and away from the deadly, but aqua-phobic, aliens.

One of the movie’s real strengths — aside from its technical excellence and good story — is its interesting juxtaposition that the main character is terminally ill, yet she is fighting to survive. Along the way, she never gives up (including in one of the best scenes in the movie when she is trapped under a car with the tires slowly deflating). Sam is constantly on the brink of death, yet she defies the odds. And that is exactly what she has done with her cancer diagnosis: always beating the odds, surviving longer than anyone thought she would. And the payoff is that she builds an unlikely friendship with Eric, a man she at first doesn’t even want tagging along but who quickly becomes a man she finds well worth saving at any cost. The film builds a legitimately touching and worthwhile screen friendship with hardly a word ever spoken between the characters, and the end payoff (well, basically the entire third act, including several touching scenes between them) is really what makes the movie, even beyond the action and chaos and seamless visuals.

This movie doesn’t explain why people need to be quiet, or how they figured it out. It just goes with it, and that the realization comes about while the main character, Sam, is unconscious really helps the movie to pace itself. And since most in the audience will know the “secret,” anyway, why waste time explaining it? Day One, then, engages with rapid-fire intensity, and the less time spent on explaining things and the more time it can spend with the action, the quietly intense moments of near misses and survival, and the wonderful character moments between Sam and Eric, the better. The film knows its world, knows its rhythm, and knows its audience, and it plays with expert elegance to all three.

It must also be stated that, like its predecessors before it, Day One is movie of incredible sound design, which is surprisingly critical for a film that is all about silence. It’s important to find the right balance because the slightest cue is life-or-death important. The film doesn’t over-amplify any noise but uses the surrounding quiet as a catalyst of sorts to make things more terrifyingly impactful, even at a relatively normal volume, where even things like the slight sound of crunching glass underfoot or opening a can of cat food portends great danger. And the film really plays on that during a scene of an attempted mass evacuation partway through when a throng of people are trying to be quiet but, really, can hundreds, if not thousands, of people really walk in silence? In that line of thinking, the movie quietly asks its audience to go with a few things with Frodo. The cat never hisses, meows, throws up a hairball, makes anyone sneeze, bats at a would-be-toy, goes to the bathroom, or does anything to make a sound. It’s actually the quietest character in the movie, but oh boy is he so important to the story that it’s worth the conceit.

A Quiet Place: Day One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Paramount releases A Quiet Place: Day One to Blu-ray with a wonderful 1080p transfer. For the most part, it looks wonderful, with ultra crisp digital definition to every element in the film, especially obvious as the destruction and devastation settle in. Here, the broken remains of buildings, the smoldering ruins of cars, tattered clothes, bloodied faces, and dusty layers are all plainly visible with all of the definition that 1080p can provide. Never does the viewer feel like there could be more to see (even if the UHD does manage to amplify things). Likewise, colors are wonderful. The movie does take on a predominantly dark and dreary tone with ashy grays the color staple, absorbing all but the most brilliant of clothing colors, and even then muting them from the layered dust and the general wear that accumulates so fast in a disaster area. Still, there are plenty of streaks of red blood to be found and, of course, some rich coloring prior to the alien attack. Fireballs erupt with bold and intense yellows, oranges, and reds. Black levels are very good if not a shade to the gray side, at times. White balance is fine, and skin tones are very rich, though again perhaps a little less so considering the accumulated ash and debris. The only real issue here is the odd spurt of banding (look at the 11:30 and 58:50 marks), but it's not a major issue; even in the smoky environments the overall impact is very minimal. There is also a trace of noise in a few challenging low light spots (look at the 23-minute mark), but overall this is a very healthy, faithful, and enjoyable transfer from Paramount.

A Quiet Place: Day One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Dolby Atmos is the encode of choice for A Quiet Place: Day One, and as expected the film sounds brilliant. It's really a highlight reel of Dolby Atmos audio excellence. The track presents some excellent bass throughout, offering great depth and tight response. It's very powerful but never overwhelmingly so. The track also features great directional effects, such as police and military vehicles rushing from side to side in one early shot, while monsters scamper and scurry here end there — also with great power — at various points throughout the film. The Atmos configuration offers some of the best and most impressively integrated overhead elements yet in an Atmos track. Helicopters circle overhead before the invasion, and the same style of effect is really punctuated when people are trying to be quiet in the 16-minute mark. Further, there is a wonderful overhead element to falling rain effects around the 43-minute mark, along with rolling thunder in the background, and of course the total saturation means that all speakers carry the effect for a soaking impact on the listener. Environmental effects are excellent. Again, pre-invasion scenes out on city streets deliver wonderful immersion to the full impact of ambient sound, with every siren, bit of pedestrian chatter, and the like drawing the listener into the everyday New York hustle and bustle. And, of course, that ambient impact is only heightened when a slight sound penetrates the otherwise dead silence that is so crucial to the film. To make things even better, music is rousing in its clarity, space, and power, and dialogue is clear, centered, and perfectly prioritized. This is audio bliss.

A Quiet Place: Day One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of A Quiet Place: Day One contains a few extras. No DVD copy is included, but Paramount has bundled in a digital copy code.

• Day Zero: Beginnings and Endings (1080p, 7:58): Setting the film in New York, shying away from "iconic" destruction opportunities, Michael Sarnoski's direction and contributions, cast and characters, and more.
• In the City: Chaos in Chinatown (1080p, 7:51): Shooting realities, challenges, and digital supports in the various sets that stand in for New York (including redressing the same sets to stand in as different iconic New York locations).
• The Exodus: Against the Tide (1080p, 6:27): Creating an iconic scene from the film in which a mass of humanity attempts to silently leave the city.
• The Long Walk: Monsters in Midtown (1080p, 7:49): Working with the feline actors in the film, Joseph Quinn's performance in the film, London shooting locales, working against invisible or stand-in monsters, the iconic subway and tunnel sequence, and more.
• Pizza at the End of the World (1080p, 7:17): Building franchise lore, the pizza side story, Sam's poetry, the themes of death, the film's ending, and more.
• Deleted and Extended Scenes (1080p, 15:06 total; runtime): Included are The Back of the Bus - Extended, Take Off Your Shoes - Extended, Finding the Farm - Extended, New Shoes - Deleted, and Poetry at Patsy's - Deleted.

A Quiet Place: Day One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A Quiet Place: Day One is quite the film: a film of expertly crafted action and suspense but also superbly drawn and performed characters who give the film a meaning and depth beyond the action and the gimmick. And that is what has made this franchise work so well: it's based on a gimmick (be quiet or die), but it's always been about far more than that. It's about love and compassion that can be expressed in ways beyond words, and even in the worst of situations. This is a terrific entry in the series. Is it the best in the series? No, that still goes to the first film. Is it the least of the series? Probably, yes, but "least" in this series is still better than most of the movies that Hollywood cranks out anymore. This is a great genre film, a worthy (and worthwhile) entry into the franchise, and it portends good things going forward if this is the floor for it. Paramount's Blu-ray is every bit as exceptional as one would expect, offering near perfect video, perfect Atmos audio, and a nice assortment of extras. Very highly recommended!