Weekend Watch - A Quiet Place: Day One

                Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating, review, and recommendation. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers, is the latest film in the A Quiet Place franchise, A Quiet Place: Day One, the prequel directed by Michael Sarnoski (Pig) and cowritten by Sarnoski and A Quiet Place director John Krasinski. The prequel looks at the start of the franchise’s alien invasion in New York City from the perspective of cancer patient Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) as she fights to survive and get herself some pizza. The film also features appearances from Joseph Quinn as a stranded British law student, Alex Wolff as hospice nurse Reuben, and Djimon Hounsou as harried father Henri. The film opened this weekend to mixed but positive audience and critic reviews. Let’s get into it.

Letter Grade: B; while not as tension filled as the other two films in the franchise, it still finds those moments of terror and humanity that have made the series such a hit.

Should you Watch This Film? If you’re looking for a less intense horror film, this’ll definitely be one you can check out. The characters are strong, and their stories make it worth watching.

Why?

                I don’t know that A Quiet Place: Day One is going to be what everyone was looking for from the prequel film. It doesn’t set out to explain the aliens or their reasons for coming to Earth or even set up some initial fight against them. It simply wants to look at another story within this universe that happens to occur in the first few days of the alien invasion. For me, that’s exactly what I needed from it. I was so worried going in that it was going to try and do too much explaining and worldbuilding and lose any of the pieces that make the first two films so good – the human stories. Instead, this film leans harder into the human element, feeling almost more like a disaster/survival horror than the jumpscare-filled home invasion horror of the first or the postapocalyptic road trip of the second. It’s also helped in this endeavor by the strong performances from Lupita Nyong’o (Us and Little Monsters) and Joseph Quinn (Overlord and Stranger Things) who portray their struggle to survive as something inherently tied to everything that has come before them and their own humanity.

                Technically, the film remains on par with the prior films with a strong sound design, solid visual effects, and another bout of creative cinematography that you really only get from horror films. The oppressive silence isn’t quite as pervasive here as in the past films, but in the moments of true tension, it returns to amp up that heart rate just a bit more at each small sound. The creatures feature a bit more prevalently in this film, and any time you get to see them up close, the visual design holds up as something not quite knowable and immediately horrifying. The camera work continues to do a great job adding to the tension of the scenes, and it all comes together so well to give us another strong, if slightly less terrifying, horror film.

                By focusing on the characters, the film does lose some of that intensity that we’ve become familiar with in the first two films, and I think that’s why we’re seeing some of those less than stellar reviews. The first film really blended those two elements together better than so many horror films, and the second continued in that same vein. This one swings back and forth between the human drama and horror sequences more than actually blending them, but it still works because of how well-executed the human element is. Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn play well individually and off of each other thanks in large part to each of their abilities to emote, leaning into the gimmick of these films by communicating so well without words. Quinn plays the supporting character so well, portraying empathy and desperation in equal parts so well, and he really gives the story the extra oomph that it needs to really resonate. Obviously, though, Nyong’o is the showstopper here, showing us from the jump how versatile her acting bag is. Here, she plays Sam as this cynical, jaded woman without any real reason to hope, but she manages to find those moments worth celebrating even as the world falls apart around her, and we believe it the whole time thanks to the combination of solid writing and her amazing acting abilities. By the time the credits roll, we’ve seen her progress through a satisfying and believable character arc that reminds us all of why life is worth living – to eat pizza and connect with other people.

                A Quiet Place: Day One might not answer all the burning questions that we have about the start of the alien invasion, and it might lack some of the horror chops of the previous installments, but it still turns in a decently scary survival flick with a truly compelling story about people, which is the core of the Quiet Place films anyway. It’s probably not going to be what everyone wants it to be, but for me, I can now definitely say that I just want to keep watching stories of different individuals in this postapocalyptic world much more than I want to understand how any of it works. This film is currently in theaters, and if you’re looking for a solid thriller, this is the one to go see this weekend.

Weekend Watch - The last of Us Episode 1

                Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week, we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating, review, and recommendation. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers is the first episode of HBO’s new television series, The Last of Us, based on the critically acclaimed survival horror games from Naughty Dog and Sony. The show stars Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, Merle Dandridge, and Anna Torv and opened its first episode to widespread acclaim from fans of the games and fans of television in general, briefly earning the highest IMDB rating for a television show ever. Let’s get into it.

Letter Grade: A-; this show is clearly well-made and has made fans happy. We’ll see how it continues to handle the hype.

Should you Watch This Show? Probably. If you loved the games, my understanding is that this is must-watch television and a phenomenal adaptation. If you know nothing about the games but like post-apocalyptic stuff, this looks to be one of the better offerings out there too.

Why?

                The Last of Us’s first episode, titled “When You’re Lost in the Darkness,” comes out swinging, feeling equally like a high-quality television show and a solid video game adaptation at the same time. If you’re like me and have only heard about the games but never played (because you’re an Xbox gamer only or something), the show does a good job of establishing characters, relationships, and the world in the first episode, doing enough to keep us less knowledgeable viewers hooked while paying enough service to the initiated to not alienate them. Their combination of worldbuilding and character establishment has made this one of the better first episodes that I’ve watched in a while, even if it is nearly an hour and a half in runtime (cable used to do double features for their premieres right?).

                Like he does in so many of his features, Pedro Pascal helps sell the product. His performance as Joel just in the first episode has me hooked and interested in his character development. He plays the hardened cynic who secretly cares about people really hard so well at this point that you’d almost forget his first major HBO role as Oberyn Martell. In The Last of Us, he dons a relatively believable southeast Texas accent and shows us a range in this first episode that goes from stretched but loving father to mournful and hardened veteran to begrudging caretaker who finally has had enough and decides to do something about it. Honestly, if he just turns this first episode in as a sizzle reel to casting agencies from here on, he’ll probably be in a job for the next twenty years.

                Luckily for Pascal, The Last of Us is no Wonder Woman 1984, and he doesn’t have to carry the show on his back. As apocalyptic shows go, the production value is high, and the storytelling seems to be taking it in a good direction. Director Craig Mazin and his team do a phenomenal job in this first episode of capturing the world and, strange as it may seem, the gameplay of The Last of Us in the medium of television. From an early scene of a truck suddenly forcing Joel and his daughter to take the longer, more dangerous route out of town to Joel’s to-do list of sidequests in Boston to what I assume is cutscene dialogue options when Joel and Tess are offered the job of transporting Ellie, this first episode showcases the right ways to turn a video game into a less interactive and more linear form of visual media.

                The Last of Us episode one introduces the show’s audience to its world and characters in brilliant fashion, capturing the spirit of the video game in the form of a television show that is sure to make most fans, new and old, happy. One small knock is the show’s current similarity to many other apocalyptic shows, which should be assuaged by the end of this first season if my friends who played the games are to be believed. Should it achieve that uniqueness and distance itself from the pack, I think we can optimistically say that we have been blessed with yet another hit from HBO. The show’s next episode airs tomorrow night, and all episodes are available from the time of release on HBO Max.