A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

Look, I really liked A Quiet Place. It had some great set-pieces, a good core cast of characters, and just the right pacing and plotting to keep you from picking it all apart while it was on. Then came the sequel, which wasn’t as good, but enjoyed major success. And now we have attempts to develop this into a full franchise, which makes me feel as depressed and pessimistic as seeing a film advertised as coming “from the imagination of John Krasinski”.

There's very little to really say about this. It connects in a small way to the second film, but can easily be watched as a standalone "adventure" in this world where silence is golden. Lupita Nyong'o stars as Sam, a woman with terminal cancer and a cat she loves. Joseph Quinn is Eric, a man with no real character or depth (from what I could gather). Once our planet has been besieged by the creatures seen in the two movies preceding this, Sam and Eric eventually cross paths. But will they be able to help one another survive the perilous situation?

Written and directed this time around by Michael Sarnoski (although Krasinski once again helped with the storyline), this is a pretty disappointing piece of work from everyone involved. It certainly pales in comparison to Sarnoski's previous movie, Pig, and it's far down the list of Lupita Nyongo's films. Even Quinn, as relatively new on the scene as he is, looks set to quickly position this as one of his lesser films.

The visual effects are perfectly fine, but I didn't care about them. Some scenes with people in peril are fine, but I didn't care about them. Sarnoski tries to pace things well with a few key set-pieces on the way to the ending, but I didn't care about them. And those last few scenes? You guessed it . . . I didn't care about them.

A Quiet Place is the sort of thing you can get away with once. Keep going back to that well and all you do is draw attention to the flaws and plot holes. It's hard to maintain a vested interest in people when you can just as easily roll your eyes and wonder why they can't just sit still and be quiet until danger has passed them by. It's also hard to know what we already know about the creatures from the first two movies and then watch everyone fail to figure out how to fight back at them.

If it wasn't for Nyong'o here then this wouldn't even make it to the level of average. She's as good as ever, working hard in material that feels far beneath her. Quinn tries hard when sharing scenes with his phenomenal co-star, but he constantly comes up short, and isn't helped at all by a script that doesn't seem to know how to properly develop and nurture his character.

If you're after something that has the basic elements in place and does the bare minimum to trick people into feeling entertained for a while then knock yourself out. If you're after something that has actual tension and impact though then I'm afraid that you have to look elsewhere.

4/10

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Old (2021)

Here's the plot of Old. A few different groups of people end up on a lovely beach and discover that time works different there. Although I cannot remember the exact correlation, it's something like half an hour on the beach being the equivalent to one year (this fluctuates though, by my reckoning, so let's not view that measurement as set in stone). While worried by that turn of events, things get even worse for the people on the beach when they realise that they are unable to leave.

Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan (although it's based on a graphic novel, 'Sandcastle', by Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters, Old is one of the most staggeringly awful mainstream movies I have seen in some time. Frustratingly, it has a good idea at the heart of it, and there's an explanation at the end of the movie that at least explains some character motivation, but it is never handled well. Much like the characters onscreen, viewers will feel themselves ageing prematurely as this drags itself from one ridiculous moment to the next.

Here are some of the people featured in the cast though, a selection of names that may tempt you into watching the film. Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Eliza Scanlen, and Aaron Pierre. If you're anything like me then you will appreciate at least a couple of those actors. Don't let their involvement here fool you. Shyamalan has left everyone out to dry, giving them a horribly weak script and directing them to act in a way that is so far removed from their best work that you won't believe that the Vicky Krieps here, for example, is the same woman who did such amazing work in Phantom Thread. Nobody comes out of this well.

Although different from the more overt format of what many used to (and some may still) view as his biggest mis-step, Lady In The Water, Shyamalan has once again tip-toed his way right back to the cause of his previous "fall from grace", a plot that revolves people figuring out they are simply characters in a plot being crafted by someone else. There's one big difference this time around, the author of the narrative being someone who deliberately causes harm, even if it is for the greater good, but it certainly feels like Shyamalan has gone for another swim in the turbulent waters of hubris.

There's nothing else here that feels as if it is worth mentioning. I wasn't a big fan of the score, the special effects were sometimes good and sometimes not so good, and no one aspect can make up for that killer combination of the poor script and poor performances. I even think the cinematography, editing, shot choices, etc. seemed to be hampered by Shyamalan dedicating himself to creating a vision that he never really got a proper grip on.

My advice is to stay as far away from this as possible. And, funnily enough, I don't think time will be kind to it.

2/10

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Pig (2021)

Every time another Nicolas Cage film comes along lately, I end up wondering when he will finally stop having his better onscreen moments viewed with the surprise that seems to meet every other performance he delivers recently. Yes, he still takes on more projects every year than most actors, or so it seems (well, so it seems to everyone but Eric Roberts), but he constantly does his best in them. And when the film is worthy of his best, as this one is, you get something special.

Cage plays Rob, an antisocial individual living in a cabin in the middle of the woods. It's just him and his pig, and the two do a damn fine job of finding truffles, which are collected by a young man named Amir (Alex Wolff). The whole delicate balance is upset when Rob's pig is stolen - pignapped - and Rob has to track down the thieves. He and Amir go on a journey that leads Rob to reconnect with a number of people from his past, and that means also creeping towards some memories that have been buried by Amir's father, Darius (Adam Arkin).

The first full feature directed by Michael Sarnoski, who also wrote the film with Vanessa Block, Pig is a film that requires some patience as it takes you down a path you think you know before then sidestepping any number of easy options in favour of something genuinely moving and grubbily beautiful. You may be expecting a film about a man who gets desperate and angry while trying to find his beloved pig, but you end up with a film that does more to illustrate the incapacitating and sometimes-insurmountable tidal wave of grief that can hit someone than any other recent film I can think of, with the exception of Inside Llewyn Davis.

Cage is superb in the main role. He's slightly Cage-y, but also has a lot of times when he's just creating space, moments of quiet, for others to fill. He is a man avoiding a confrontation with himself by confronting others, even if many of those confrontations are calm and non-violent ones. Wolff continues to pick decent roles in films that have allowed him to build a filmography already filling up with a great variety of interesting choices. His character may not be the focus of the film, but his own journey, and that of his father, ends up inextricably linked with Rob in a way that crystallises beautifully on the way to an ending that is, and I'm not exaggerating here, deeply moving in an unexpected, but earnest, way.

You can love someone, or something, and that can fill a huge space in your heart. And you can then be stuck with one hell of an empty feeling if you lose that loved one. Pig shows people who have that emptiness, for different reasons, but it also shows that you can work towards filling that space again. Maybe not entirely, maybe not by much, maybe just providing yourself some kind of interior cushion made up of memories that you hope will help you get through a few more days until you can figure out some other way to deal with things, or find some other distraction. If Pig managed to remind just one viewer that they're not alone in how they have ever struggled with grief/loss of love then it would be a success, but I suspect it actually reminds everyone of moments they have battled through, or at least reminds everyone that most people we know in our lives have been through, or will go through, at least one huge trauma that will irrevocably change them in some way.

If you're somehow unable to empathise, it's still a good, simple, tale of a man out to retrieve his stolen pig.

9/10

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