Silence is golden again in A Quiet Place: Day One, where fierce extraterrestrial creatures lay waste to the noisiest city on Earth. In the prequel (opening in theaters this week), the blind-but-deadly critters who hunt by sound alone invade Manhattan.
Day One follows the perilous plight of terminally ill Samira (Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o), her cat Frodo and hanger-on stranger Eric (Joseph Quinn). Writer/director Michael Sarnoski (Pig) replaces John Krasinski, who helmed the first two installments of the hugely successful franchise. Krasinski helped develop the Day One story and produced the prequel. Sarnoski takes Fango behind the (silent) screams of his first big studio effort.
What did the producers see in Pig that made them select you for A Quiet Place: Day One?
I can’t totally speak to exactly what they saw, but I know John [Krasinski] really loved Pig, and he asked me to bring a little bit of that touch to the Quiet Place world. What Pig shares with the other Quiet Place movies is that yes, there’s sort of a genre thing seemingly happening, but at its core, it’s very much a drama with unexpected emotional turns and characters. He wanted to bring that quiet emotionality, which the other movies did so well.
Besides that, anything else specifically? What was it about your pitch that won them over?
I don’t know, man. I told them, “Hey guys, here’s the character I would love to follow.” It’s an unconventional character for this sort of movie. I was fully expecting them to be like, “Yeah, that’s a pretty unconventional fun idea. Let’s not do it.” But instead, they were very gracious and said, “Heck yeah, let’s do it.” I guess it was the unexpected nature of it.
Initial director Jeff Nichols left the project because he felt that it wouldn’t be his movie. How did you make it yours?
It was through the character. It was saying, “This whole movie is going to be lensed through Sam’s perspective and through what she’s really going through in her life.” And I wanted to lean away from some of the classic tropes of the New York invasion movies and really focus on a character I felt connected to. Just keeping a very strong through line with that character was my way to approach it.
Coming off a small indie, what was the biggest challenge of doing a mega-budget studio film?
The scale wasn’t really that difficult just because you get surrounded by so many truly talented people, and at the end of the day, you’re just having conversations with your department heads and your crew and figuring out the best way to do things. You just have a lot more people.
The biggest challenge was probably creating a real sense of New York City, and a real sense of a journey through that city in a way that we hadn’t seen it in a destroyed, postapocalyptic New York, and really making it feel like we were boots on the ground in that place.
What different wrinkles did you want to bring to the creatures?
It’s always a tricky balance for them because some of the best aspects of these creatures are that they’re so primal and so fundamental in the sense that if you make a sound, you die. And if you start putting too fine a point on some things, they become less scary, less mysterious. So, it was about giving a little more information while not suddenly just explaining them away and making them kind of boring.
I wanted to explore how they work in larger herds. I wanted to explore some of the structure in their ecosystem and their society, but I wanted to keep it all a little bit off camera, not fully explained. I didn’t want some scientists sitting there saying, “Oh, we figured out this and that.” It’s about getting suggestions of this stuff without overexplaining it to the point that it gets boring.
Did you or the producers ever come up with a backstory for the invasion and for the creatures to be filled in at a later date or to help you with your story?
There are some ideas. Some of the things that have been floated around are things that John has said in the past. Like, in his mind, these creatures came from a planet that was destroyed and they were cast across the cosmos, and they’re so durable that they ride these meteorites that land on Earth. Some of that was already alluded to in past projects, and he’s talked about that. The fun of them is keeping it a little essential, a little primal.
Much of your film is pure Hitchcock. With the suspense, did you study the master? Was that something that was going through your head, “How would Hitchcock do this?”
I hadn’t. I’ve watched a lot of Hitchcock, and I’m sure some of that comes naturally. With any filmmaker today, that probably seeps into their work. I don’t think it was something I was consciously doing, but yeah, inevitably, when you’re dealing with very focused suspense in this silence, where you just really have to build that through visuals, I’m sure that was a strong influence, whether or not I meant for it to be.
I also felt a very strong vibe from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds novel, as things progressed in your movie. Was that an influence at all?
Any sort of invasion story probably owes a lot of debt to that. New York invasion movies are a genre unto themselves. Any alien invasion thing probably borrows a lot from [Wells]. I don’t think we were trying to hit any of those moments, but it’s inevitable to have some comparisons there.
You do a great job cheating New York City at a studio outside London. What was the key to capturing that authenticity?
It was having a lot of conversations with Simon Bowles, the production designer. We built this two-block backlot in London that we played as multiple parts of New York. It was a really fine-tuned puzzle box, as we were shooting one part of it, we would be turning the other part into another part of the city. It was constantly evolving and changing.
Another big thing we did was try to capture a sense of being on the street in New York without landmarks, without trying to say, “Oh, this is that exact spot.” It was trying to capture the vibe of different neighborhoods. We start in Chinatown, and then we’re on the Lower East Side, and it was about trying to figure out the sort of hallmarks, the color palettes, the looks of buildings, and how do we use that on our set without making it like, “Hey, look, it’s the Empire State Building.”
Simon did an incredible job of conjuring the feeling of New York without being so specific that it fell apart.
I imagine that 9/11 was playing through your mind during some of the attack scenes.
That’s inevitable nowadays with New York destruction movies. Early on, we had conversations about that, and it came to the point that it’s almost not doing it justice to ignore that feeling, that sort of look, because, unfortunately, we’ve seen what New York looks like when it’s under attack. So, we had to have some of that imagery. It was something we thought about very seriously, but it had to have a sense of that at times.
Would you see yourself returning to this world again?
Absolutely. Again, the monsters and this world are so fundamental. Any character story you can come up with to explore is valid. You have these monsters that hunt a very primal aspect of humanity, the sound that we make. Now we’re in this apocalyptic world, and there are so many different avenues into that which you could explore. It’s very ripe for the picking.
Will anyone be pushing those two well-trained cats who play Frodo for a new Academy Award category, Best Performance by An Animal?
[Laughs} They absolutely deserve it. It’s some of the best animal acting I’ve ever seen. They have my vote for sure.
What are your future plans?
Next up I’m working with Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer on a Robin Hood movie [The Death of Robin Hood] that I’ve been writing for a little while. We’re going to shoot that next, which I’m very excited about. They’re incredible and are going to do an amazing job with it. I’m diving right into that pretty soon.
Do you see more horror films in your future?
Absolutely. I’m a little bit genre-agnostic. I would consider any genre as long as I can find a character that I want to explore it with. I wasn’t seeking out a horror film, but it turned out that way because it was a great opportunity to explore a story I wanted to tell. So, no doubt.
Stay tuned for more in our upcoming interview with A Quiet Place stars Alex Wolff and Djimon Hounsou. A Quiet Place: Day One is in theaters June 27th.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
