A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE

A prequel to the 2 films released by creator John Krasinski, the story follows Samira (Lupita Nyong'o) on a trip into New York City with her cat when the monsters first arrive on our planet. New York City is a perfect place for this story to take place due to the high volume of noise the city emanates; however, without giving away too much, the film desperately tries to pull at the audiences heartstrings too much with Samira's story. I understand the need for the audience to buy into her past to gain sympathy but it's too heavy handed. What I'm sure was setup as a humanitarian storyline, especially with her involvement later on with Eric (Joseph Quinn), it almost comes across as comical in the end. In addition, the film had serious pacing problems as clocking in at only 100 minutes, it feels longer than that with the ballooning story between Samira/Eric with many pages passing by without any interaction with the monsters. I will say when the monsters are onscreen, it is very unsettling watching them devour the city within hours of their arrival. I'm unsure where the franchise goes from here but being that it's making money, I'm sure they'll figure something out. 6/10