Having enjoyed the first two “Quiet Place” monster movies, with a few reservations, I was really looking forward to this origin story. I think it succeeds pretty well, especially in terms of how the cataclysm affects a small group of people, but I was really hoping for a larger overview. When the fighter planes roar over the city before the aliens arrive en masse I would really like to know just what the heck they are speeding towards. What warning could the authorities possibly have received and how are they responding to it at all? Once the aliens arrive (and how does that work, exactly?) the devastation begins immediately and never stops.
Michael Sarnosky’s saga starts slowly, in a hospice, with terminally ill Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) persuaded to accompany a group into New York City, just as the world is being invaded by rampaging aliens who kill anything they can hear. She hides, along with her therapy cat and a meek bystander, Eric (Joseph Quinn), trying to survive the first wave of the attack and sneak out of the city while they still can.
Like the other two movies, this is pulse-pounding survivalist adventure, much of it staged in silence. This time, however, the world is not silent. Not yet. The attack comes with startling ferocity and speed. It is intense and harrowing. And unlike the first two movies we actually see the aliens in action, closeup and frighteningly. That’s what I wanted, and what I missed in the first two entries. Even so, however, I still have questions about the invaders. Are they carnivorous — are they eating what they kill? They seem to hunt — just what is their goal? Lots of aspects could be better explained.
My other quibble is that while the humans learn pretty that silence can save them, they are not nearly as quiet as they ought to be. The first films emphasized the need for absolute silence; the people in this entry rarely attempt to be totally quiet and it seems to me that more of them should have died than actually do. Perhaps that is because this is PG-13 and the filmmakers want the audience to feel hope for the future. The conclusion does offer some hope for anyone that can swim, although that seems a rather dubious way to beat a rapacious species that just crossed space to massacre mankind. Anyway, the cat is great. ☆ ☆ ☆. 10 November 2024.