‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ director on ‘Aliens’ influence and film’s end

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NEW YORK CITY — For his first Hollywood tentpole feature, A Quiet Place: Day One director and writer Michael Sarnoski wanted to take big swings.

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Now playing in theatres, the prequel to the other two films in the post-apocalyptic horror franchise launched by John Krasinski back in 2018 takes place in New York City and tells the story of the first day blood-thirsty aliens — with hypersensitive hearing — invaded planet Earth, killing everything they could detect.

Krasinski starred in and wrote and directed the first two Quiet Place movies, which were released in 2018 and 2021. Both entries were set in an unnamed small town and also featured his wife, Emily Blunt.

This time, the action is ratcheted up as millions of New Yorkers try to soundlessly flee to safety by boarding boats that will take them to safety. Djimon Hounsou is the lone connective tissue as he reprises his Part II “Man on the Island” character in a brief cameo.

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Sarnoski, who made a name for himself back in 2021 when he directed Nicolas Cage in the revenge thriller Pig, said he was influenced by James Cameron’s 1986 Alien sequel when he conceived his story idea with Krasinski.

“There’s a lot to be said for Aliens; you go from the smaller more contained movie and then do the bigger one that has more action,” Sarnoski told Postmedia in an interview. “That was one that we talked about a lot.”

Sarnoski’s new film, which took in a franchise-best $53 million at the box office this weekend, follows Lupita Nyong’o’s Samira, a terminal cancer patient who is visiting the bustling metropolis when a shower of meteorites comes streaking across the sky. Samira was hitting the Big Apple in hopes of grabbing a slice of pizza, so — with her beloved black-and-white cat Frodo in tow — she sets off on a journey through the ravaged city to obtain one last bite from her favourite spot in Harlem, unfazed by the prospect of death.

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Partway through her trek amongst burned out buildings and abandoned cars, she encounters Eric (played by Stranger Things breakout star Joseph Quinn), an English law student. As he surfaces from a flooded subway, he spots Frodo and the cat leads him back to Samira. The trio form an unlikely partnership as they tiptoe their way across a landscape patrolled by aliens that are triggered by sound.

But Sarnoski tried not to think about his film as a prequel to one of the most successful horror film series in recent memory. “I really wanted to see this as a character story,” he said. “You think about all these (other) sequels and how they play out. But you also think, ‘What if this was the only movie? What if those others didn’t exist? What if it was just about these characters?’ If you aren’t doing that justice, none of the other stuff is going to matter.”

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In a separate interview, Nyong’o and Quinn called Sarnoski’s conclusion to his standalone story “brave.” In a chat last week, the filmmaker spoke more about the haunting final scene and taking the Quiet Place universe to brand-new heights.

How did you want to take this franchise in a different direction?

I wanted to honour what they had done in the past, which was something that had intense scares and these creatures, but that was something that was focused on intimate character-driven stuff. I think my version of it was to find a character story that I responded to and I wanted to explore and was unique and then try and do that character story justice.

Who was your entry point into this story?

When John came to me and said, ‘Hey, we’re doing New York, day one,’ I thought it would be interesting to follow a character like Sam to see what she’s dealing with during the end of the world. I think it kind of puts it in a different light for her. She was the beginning, then finding someone to pair with her was the next step. So it was Eric and then it was the cat.

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You just mentioned the cat and I didn’t know that Lupita didn’t want to act opposite a cat on this film.

It’s not that she didn’t want a cat, she was afraid of cats before we started this. But she was so committed to the role that she started spending time with the cat and started to get to know it. Now, she has a cat of her own and she loves them … once you find that one cat that’s amazing, it can change the whole world for you.

Setting this in New York City is a huge departure for the franchise.

That was one of the most exciting parts. We weren’t going to do the smaller, rural story. We were going to set it in a city where it’s big, it’s loud, and there’s lots of people and the creatures. But finding a small, intimate story was important to me. It was really about telling the story of this huge city; this iconic city, falling apart, but it was anchored on these characters.

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A lot of people will be talking about the final scene. How did you land on that ending?

Coming up with Sam’s character, it felt like that’s where this needed to go. It was about finding (an end) that felt earned, felt triumphant, and felt life affirming. I knew how I wanted audiences to feel living the movie. It was kind of a risky bet trying to pull that off, but that was one of the goals. I thought, ‘If I can swing that, that’ll be a real win.’

A Quiet Place: Day One is now playing in theatres.

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