A quiet place: day one promised to be an action-packed prequel set on the first day of the alien invasion, but it is not action-packed and does not take place in one day. After the opening sequence of A quiet place part II gave the audience an insight into the chaos of the day when the aliens landed, A quiet place: day one wanted to expand these apocalyptic tensions into a feature-length film. But screenwriter and director Michael Sarnoski ended up delivering a much slower and darker film than the enticing logline promised.

Sarnoski was more interested in telling a heartfelt love story in a unique setting than showing the carnage of the sound-sensitive aliens ravaging the streets of New York City. There are some exciting scenes in A quiet place: day onebut they are fleeting and rare – and most of them were revealed in the trailers. A quiet place: day one is a character study. It’s more about taking Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam to her favorite pizza place than showing the immediate aftermath of the alien invasion.

A Quiet Place: Day One is not only set on the first day of the alien invasion

It’s the first four days, and the first day is over quickly

The title of A quiet place: day one suggests that it takes place entirely on the first day of the alien attack. But that is not the case; it actually covers the first four days. And it is actually only the first act (or maybe even less) of the film that actually takes place on the first day the invasion. Every time Sam and Joseph Quinn’s Eric settle down to rest in an abandoned apartment or a crumbling church, the film grinds to a halt and all the tension evaporates.

That was probably Sarnoski’s intention – he wanted to make a character-centered love story, not a big Hollywood action movie – but an entry in a post-apocalyptic horror franchise still has a lot to offer fans of the genre. And A quiet place: day one doesn’t really deliver what it promises. If Sam and Eric can survive four whole days without much effort, then it doesn’t seem too difficult to survive in this alien-infested world. In the first film, it looked more difficult to survive on day 89 than it did to survive on day 2 in the prequel.

A Quiet Place: The first day did not fulfill its core concept

It is still about how people adapt to life after the alien attack

The core concept of A quiet place: day oneWhat set it apart from the previous two films was the depiction of the immediate consequences of the aliens’ arrival. In the first two films, the Earthlings have settled into the new world order and the human population has already been decimated. A quiet place: day one promised to show the unbridled chaos of the apocalypse and humanity’s struggle to comprehend a complete overnight change in the way the world works. Yet this intriguing premise was not really fulfilled.

In A quiet place: day onethe story is still about how people adjust to life after the alien attack. Despite what the premise promised, the alien attack in A quiet place: day one doesn’t feel very immediateso that civilians and military have time to learn what to do and what not to do. Based on the premise, A quiet place: day one should have thrown his characters in at the deep end. But Sam and everyone else have plenty of opportunities to find out the aliens’ weaknesses and use them to their advantage.

A Quiet Place: Day One could have told its entire story in a single day

It could all have been reduced to a single terrifying, action-packed day

The story of A quiet place: day one could have been compressed into a single day. Sarnoski could have hit all the beats without taking all the breathers that slowed the film down. Sam keeps taking breaks, but that’s only necessary if she’s planning for long-term survival, which she isn’t. It might not seem entirely believable that Eric would fall in love with Sam in such a short period of time, but a love story that lasts four days is just as implausible as a love story that lasts just one day, and it’s easy to explain that the traumatic event of the alien invasion bonded them together faster than they would have otherwise.

There are many exciting moments in A quiet place: day one. What let the film down were all the slow, dark moments in between. By shortening the four-day time frame to a single day, Sarnoski could have created a greater sense of immediacy (and actually kept the promise of the title). A quiet place: day one is by no means a bad film, but certainly not the action-packed end-time thriller it promised to be.