Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic More than a million and a half people live on the island of Manhattan. “A Quiet Place: Day One” focuses on two: Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), a Stage 4 cancer patient, and Eric (“Stranger Things” actor Joseph Quinn), a far-from-home stranger she stumbles upon after the noise-sensitive aliens crash-land in New York.
Neither one seems to have much in the way of survival instinct, which makes them an odd couple on whom to concentrate the Big Apple-set prequel to 2018’s hit creature feature — which is probably why writer-director Michael Sarnoski (“Pig”) decided to give Samira a cat named Frodo.
People are expendable, but no one wants to see a service animal torn to shreds by aliens. Call me macabre, but I expected to see a lot more carnage than Sarnoski’s dismayingly sappy spinoff provides.
Just about every scary shot the movie has to offer appears in the trailer — including a super-freaky one where half a dozen Death Angels (as these all-ears aliens are called) race down a skyscraper to terrorize Samira and Eric.
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