10 Recent Horror Movies That Were WAY Better Than Expected
3. A Quiet Place: Day One
Random prequels in iconic horror franchises are typically a sign that the studio is desperately trying to elongate the series, and that certainly seemed to be the case with A Quiet Place: Day One.
Even though there was certainly potential in exploring the onset of the franchise's focal alien invasion, there's also something to be said for just... not doing that, given the more intimate and mysterious nature of the first two A Quiet Place movies.
As the genre has proven so many times before, sometimes knowing less is better. But A Quiet Place: Day One ultimately defied many pre-release expectations, because the prequel framing is really just window dressing for a deeply personal, character-driven story of survival that's actually more affecting than anything in the original two movies.
Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn give terrific performances in the central roles, and writer-director Michael Sarnoski (Pig) does a remarkable job of wringing every drop of humanity out of their characters. It may well be the best film of the three, even if Day One's general refusal to explicitly detail how the alien invasion happened naturally rubbed more casual-skewing fans the wrong way.