Paramount’s “A Quiet Place: Day One” is out in cinemas now, a spin-off of the prior two “A Quiet Place” films which focused on the Abbott family months or years after the attack.
This spin-off follows two new human characters – Lupita Nyong’o as the terminally ill Sam, her cat Frodo, and English law student Eric (Joseph Quinn) as they navigate New York City on the first day the creatures with ultra-sensitive hearing invade Earth and wipe out much of the populous.
Reviews have been quite good for the film, though the ending has proven somewhat contentious in regards to one character’s actions. Even so, box-office wise it has been a big success and begs the obvious question – will this spin-off get a sequel?
The film’s director Michael Sarnoski, speaking with Variety was asked if we could see such a film to which he says:
“Absolutely. I bet you will. But I don’t know — at this point, I’m just recovering from making this one. So I’m sure Paramount will come up with something very fun next.
What attracted me to this story was the uniqueness of Sam, following this dying person who isn’t even really fighting for survival. So, I would want to see something similarly off-beat, like an unexpected character in this world.”
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR “A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE”
He was also asked about the ending in which Sam (Nyong’o) effectively commits suicide to save Eric and her cat, and in doing so enjoys one last moment of connection to a world she was already saying goodbye to even before the aliens arrived.
That ending has proven contentious, but Sarnoski says it was very much the one they wanted and were going for the whole time:
“This idea that a dying person who had counted themselves out of life is finding a new light in the apocalypse, in the depth of the world around them.
There’s this unexpected journey of when everything’s crumbling and everything seems to be ending, Sam manages to find one last little moment to cherish and enjoy and some last bit of connection in the world. If the world hadn’t ended, she never would have gotten to have that ending for herself.”
There’s been comparisons drawn between this death and the sacrifice made by John Krasinski’s character in the first film:
“We definitely talked about how, on paper, this is two characters that are committing suicide. It’s just for very different reasons. That scene with John is beautiful — that he sacrifices himself for his kids.
There was something fun about doing something similar, but purely for yourself and your own agency, and something that you’ve discovered in yourself. Doing a sacrificial death at the end, that might have stepped on the toes of the first one a little more, but Sam finds it so much in her own way that it has a different resonance. Both, I hope, are beautiful, but I like to think that it rings on its own.”
Finally, asked about “A Quiet Place Part III” opening next year, he says he doesn’t know much and approached his film as “its own standalone thing that you can watch without needing to have seen the other ones”.