'A Quiet Place: Day One' briefing

2 ½ (out of 4)

            This might be where I draw the line concerning my tolerance for dopey spin-offs that never should’ve never seen the green light of day. When X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Minions have more reason to exist than your apocalyptic prequel, it only goes to show that when movies branch from their franchises in the name of exploiting some pliable premise (or often exploring some specific character), the zoomed-in, scrutinized side-storying rarely amounts to anything worth the trouble to make apart from money. Even as a cash-in scheme they’re a gamble, there’s a reason X-Men Origins: Magneto became a full-on reboot, same goes for why there are only two Star Wars Story’s, and the one that killed them was Solo… just because the Conjuring series has made a ceaseless ruse out of this doesn’t mean everyone should PARAMOUNT!

But anyway, I hate to admit, for being the lesser of three sci-fi horror-thrillers, A Quiet Place: Day One at least continues the tradition of great cut to credits parting moments. It exceeds at least the 2018 original in exploiting the modes of modern silent cinema with nods to magic and puppetry — but there’s no real challenge to communicate an alien invasion survival flick scaffolded by a joke plot. For spin-offs this was probably better than Birds of Prey but certainly similar, as Lupita N’yongo (doing her best as always) and her damn slice of pizza is just as annoying as Harley Quinn and her fucking breakfast sammich — at least it made sense why it was stupid in the Fantabulous whatever the fuck… but the Quiet Place series intently posits itself as artier mainstream horror, so NO don’t make your new wrinkle in the premise about some suicidal cancer patient trying to score some ‘za. Talk about diminishing your already diminished “installment.” It’s as if a professional production solely about the Twinkie subplot of Zombieland was worth planning out a whole trip to the movies.

There are some neat, terse chase sequences, that first migrating scramble with thousands in the streets was taking a page from Spielberg’s War of the Worlds with little oners and plenty of dusty panoramic panic. But this non-story has nowhere to go, except past DAY ONE, EXCUSE ME there were at least two days witnessed here minimum, sorry whatcha gonna call the next one? This almost moves like a decent TV pilot no one picked up (wait for the Quiet Place streaming series, just guessing) — it’s almost respectable and utterly superfluous. For second time director Michael Sarnoski, there’s barely a hint of the same lovelorn despair translating from the quiet melancholy of Pig, ultimately there’s hardly a scrap of stylistic difference between this and Krasinski’s brief encounters of suspense and spectacle.

Lupita is stupendous in spite of the shlock, but her support is just Sarnoski’s second collab with Alex Wolff, an under-present Djimon Hounsou (who recounts a way cooler, crazier ending to this movie in Part II, where 10 boats were massacred by our dangerous disabled invaders) and some coward (Joseph Quinn) whose not even as self-sufficient as his little pussy — why are nearly getting yourself killed to save a creature capable of making much, much less noise than you? If this is what passes for a blockbuster, let alone a horror-thriller monster movie (let me just forget this was once the date for the eighth Mission: Impossible) I may have to tune this shit out unless you give me a spin-off just about the cat.