A Quiet Place: Day One 4K UHD Review

It’s easy to imagine this third movie in the A Quiet Place’s series life as a violent, monster-focused body count thriller. It’s not. At all.

More than about travels through an alien-infested hell world for a slice of New York’s finest pizza (but it’s that too), A Quiet Place: Day One deals in the isolationism of late stage disease through the eyes of Samira (Lupita Nyong’o). Cancer afflicted, disassociated from others, and living in anger, the arrival of sound-chasing space monsters gives her emotional purpose. While others lose their lives around her, Samira finds what she knows are her last moments of internal peace – between the fight-or-flight, instinct-activating attack scenes that will continue to define her life.

A Quiet Place: Day One isn’t a hopeless existence so much a terrifyingly stressful one

The somber destruction, the empty, moody New York streets, and Samira’s will gives A Quiet Place: Day One a sensational emotional base to build on, while the backdrop turns increasingly dire. Midway through her journey toward the coastline’s safety, Samira meets Eric (Joseph Quinn), another lost, lonely individual in a city slowly being devoured by unknown forces. In Eric, she sees some of her own anxieties reflected back, and by chance, another cause to live. Not for any deep relationship, but on a purely human level that contextualizes a mass disaster in a smaller narrative.

New York is an obvious setting for a movie like this, but also an engaging choice. This isn’t a typical apocalypse. The food, the medicine, the water, and even the power continue to function even as the city appears empty. A Quiet Place: Day One isn’t a hopeless existence so much a terrifyingly stressful one, but also one incompatible with someone in Samira’s situation.

There’s something to be said for a second studio sequel – usually the “jump the shark” moment in a horror series, from Jaws to Hellraiser to Child’s Play – that doesn’t acquiesce to the potential for schlock. Instead, A Quiet Place: Day One places a sick person in the midst of disaster, finds their final purpose in life, and via uncomplicated storytelling, draws emotion from that plight. It’s skillfully photographed, effectively visualized through digital effects, and tells us that in times of uncertain chaos, empathy remains our greatest asset.

A Quiet Place: Day One’s Dolby Vision-enabled visual space produces stellar resolution, detail, and consistent texture. Not even heavy smoke can introduce artifacts or banding to reduce the disc’s clarity. The digital source avoids pockets of heavy noise. Overall sharpness remains high, clarity a definite goal.

It’s not particularly intense visually, in terms of the Dolby Vision pass anyway. Light rarely appears vibrantly bright, creating passable visual range assisted by the consistent, smoky black levels. Color saturation produces muted tones, appropriate for the story, mostly in grays, blues, and oranges, scene dependent. While A Quiet Place: Day One lacks the usual pop and wow factor, it’s a fine disc in terms of preserving tonality.

Noting New York’s decibel level in the opening frames, Quiet Place: Day One, the Atmos track then lives up to that promise. The city sounds absolutely alive, with helicopters, horns, cars, and chatter filling the soundstage. It’s magnificent ambiance. Then come the monsters, and the positioning and accuracy get even better, tracking not only sounds for the aliens to hear, but the sounds by people as well. Heights factor in helicopters, falling debris, or creature movement.

Stellar low-end helps with explosions, roars, and other general action. Aliens rain down from space, making a heavy thud when they land. Helicopters and other vehicle engines create fantastic range and intensity too. A Quiet Place: Day One matches the previous two movies in this series in delivering high-end home audio demo moments.

Other than deleted/extended scenes, it’s five generic featurettes focused on specific scenes.

Full disclosure: This Blu-ray was provided to us for review. This has not affected the editorial process. For information on how we handle review material, please visit our about us page to learn more.

The following six screen shots serve as samples for our subscription-exclusive set of 32 full resolution uncompressed 4K screen shots grabbed directly from the UHD: