There’s a lovely moment, towards the tail end of Michael Sarnoski’s A Quiet Place: Day One, in which British expat (and, with the best will in the world, complete dweeb) Eric tries to lift the spirits of his post-apocalyptic travel companion.
To put it mildly, he and Sam have been through the wringer these past 24 hours. Together, they have witnessed the ultimate downfall of human civilisation as we know it, watched helplessly from the sidelines as their fellow New Yorkers have been slaughtered in droves, and had a disproportionate number of close calls with the “Death Angels”; considering that those beasties only just fell from the sky that very same morning. It’s been a stressful day to say the least, even by the Big Apple’s standards.
Yet as they’ve soldiered on through stampeding crowds and flooded subway tunnels, there’s been a tantalising prize helping them stay sane. An incentive for the duo to keep on persevering against overwhelming odds; in the form of a delicious slice from Sam’s childhood pizzeria. That’s right, instead of fighting to get out of Dodge, these two are just fighting for a scrumptious pepperoni feast.
A goal that, in the humble opinion of this writer, ranks amongst the most relatable in all of horror.
Of course, it’s not really the pizza that’s motivating them here, but rather what the pizza —and the associated fetch quest to retrieve it — represents. It’s comfort, it’s normality and, for Sam specifically, it’s a chance to not be defined by the illness that’s slowly sapping away at her resolve.
You see, even before mini Cloverfield monsters started raining down from the heavens, Sam was already living on borrowed time. The precise nature of her condition is kept relatively ambiguous (notwithstanding the fact that she’s been admitted to a hospice where they prescribe fentanyl patches), but we can infer that she doesn’t have long left. As such, she’s determined to make every last nanosecond count and live however much of her life remains to the absolute fullest. Misophonic ETs be damned!
It therefore comes as a devastating blow when she learns that, after all the hardship she’s endured to get there, her favourite eatery has been reduced to rubble by the Death Angels. Robbed of this final flicker of joy and seemingly unable to go out on her own terms, there’s nothing she can do now but collapses to her knees and wordlessly grieve. Which is pretty much how I respond every time I’m denied pizza, and I have neither a terminal diagnosis nor an alien invasion to warrant such emotionality.
It’s as if the universe has taken everything away from Sam at this moment. And, for his part, Eric knows that it’s not an issue he can possibly hope to fix. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop him from going above and beyond to try and console a person who, in all bluntness, might as well be a total stranger to him.
Intent on giving his new friend the best possible last-night-on-earth (under the circumstances at least), he takes her to the jazz club where her late father used to perform, silently acts out an evening’s entertainment, and delivers a substitute pie from a neighbouring pizza joint — with the name of her first-choice takeaway hastily scribed on the box. It’s an achingly sweet gesture, although the jury’s still out on how warmly an impromptu mime show would be received by anyone other than the most enthusiastic of theatre kids. Let alone someone who’s deep in mourning.
Anyway, it seems to have its intended effect, momentarily cheering Sam and bringing a long-overdue smile to her face. What makes this so touching is that there’s nothing really in it for Eric. His relationship with Sam is purely platonic and while he might have the defensive capabilities of a fainting goat, it’s not like he is reliant on her to survive either. In fact, he could have justifiably turned back a long time ago and ditched Manhattan altogether. Instead, he chose to stick around out of sheer compassion.
A Wholesome End of Days
This remarkable empathy is surprisingly common throughout A Quiet Place: Day One. Eric definitely earns brownie points for repeatedly putting himself in harm’s way (in order to gather essential medicinal supplies for Sam and later rescue Frodo the cat), but there are plenty of other Good Samaritans paying it forward in the streets of New York City.
Case in point, Djimon Hounsou’s Henri makes sure that the evacuation barge doesn’t leave a soul behind as it’s chugging down the Hudson, while Sam herself takes a detour partway through her journey to escort a couple of lost youngsters to safety. It’s clear that these are fundamentally decent people then, who care about more than just their own gain. One of the main leads is a palliative care nurse for Pete’s sake, and no one takes on that line of work unless their heart is truly in it.
It’s a refreshing take on the post-apocalypse to be honest and you can absolutely see why it would attract performers of Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn’s calibre. You see, by definition, most fiction within this subgenre tends to be quite downbeat; content to wallow in sadism and abject misery. To a certain extent, that’s even kind of the point!
From The Omega Man to The Road Warrior and practically all of George Romero’s oeuvre; storytellers have, for decades, been using the end of days as a canvass for exploring our ugliest impulses. To show us what people are capable of when the chips are down and the rule of law is abandoned. And it’s a tradition that continues to this day.
Take the recent Fallout TV show, for example, which doesn’t exactly contain the most flattering depiction of mankind. At best, the denizens of its radiation-infused 23rd century are scamming each other for caps and deflowering one another’s poultry, while its less upstanding citizenry engages in debased acts of cannibalism, organ harvesting and nuclear genocide. Lucy MacLean might have a stronger moral compass than most, but that’s only because she’s been sheltered from the harsher realities of this world, living in an underground vault where it’s way easier to be nice. Had circumstances been any different, it’s likely that she too would have put her scruples aside long ago in order to survive.
Elsewhere, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga envisions a savage dystopia in which the closest thing anyone has to an ethical quandary is deciding which raving, megalomaniacal lunatic they’d prefer to swear obeisance to. In the dog-eat-dog wasteland, you can be Team People Eater, volunteer as one of Immortan Joe’s Kamikaze War Boys or pledge allegiance to the utterly unhinged Dementus (a man who duplicitously sacrifices his own followers, without giving it so much as a second’s hesitation).
In other words, there’s ample opportunity to get stuck into the insanity and embrace your inner demon. Provided that you’ve got no qualms about slaying innocents, you are all-but guaranteed to go far here. Yet options are comparatively slim for those who are burdened by conscience, which is an awful truth that the titular heroine eventually has to reckon with in her pursuit of revenge. Heck, it’s such a feral lifestyle out there in the desert that people have taken to naming themselves things like “Pissboy” and “Scrotus” and nobody bats an eyelid.
Then you’ve got HBO’s The Last of Us which, granted, has a softer side — most evident in its heart-breaking ‘Long, Long Time’ episode — but for every tender moment there’s an equally bleak tragedy lurking around the corner. Child fatalities are alarmingly high in this Cordyceps-ridden hellscape, violence is often the default response to any problem that arises, and folk are quick to resort to tribalism and quicker still to screw each over. Even certain acts of love can be rendered selfish and downright monstrous here, as anyone who’s seen the Season 1 finale will attest.
The PG-13 rated Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes couldn’t avoid this infectious pessimism either; concluding as it does on another bum note. Spoiler alert for those who haven’t seen it: the family-friendly blockbuster ends with two former allies parting on furtive terms; inevitable conflict looming on the horizon and one of them concealing a gun behind their back, just in case they need to strike first. That’s the kind of crappy future that we believe in now. Hoping for anything better seems almost naïve.
A Much-Needed Dose of Optimism
Indeed, these grim prophecies seem to be particularly in vogue at the moment (literally everything we just recapped is from the past year or so). Presumably there’s something about worlds ravaged by war, plague, factionalism and societal collapse that is resonating with the cultural zeitgeist of the day. I can’t imagine why!
All joking aside, with the news cycle being so unrelentingly awful right now, it’s no shock that audiences are connecting with these instances of feel-bad media. They’re depressingly more plausible tomorrows than those offered up by, say, OG Star Trek — especially the parts with all the chicken fucking and Pissboys running amok! I mean, tangentially, it’s worth pointing out that even Gene Rodenberry’s wide-eyed creation has taken a turn for the dour lately; with both Picard and Discovery fixating on political divides, rampant injustices and interspecies conflict.
To clarify, I am not criticising any of the aforementioned stories for being downers. On the contrary, I’ve enjoyed many of them precisely because I am so attracted to the murkier side of fiction. However, it’d probably be good for our collective mental health if we were to have a bit of a break from all that doom & gloom, lest we risk becoming too nihilistic.
And maybe, in that respect, A Quiet Place: Day One is just what the doctor ordered. An optimistic palate cleanser that dares to have faith in humanity, in an age when that’s not really fashionable anymore.
Sure, there are patches of darkness scattered throughout the film. Barely half an hour elapses before Henri commits manslaughter (trying to silence a hysterical bystander who’s making far too much noise) and soon after that an agitated randomer nearly drags Sam out of her hiding spot beneath a car and into the midst of a bloodbath. Yet, crucially, neither of these are pre-mediated acts of cruelty. Rather, they are the startled fight-or-flight responses of people panicking in the heat of the moment.
In general, when characters are given a chance to make considered decisions in this post-apocalypse, they end up making the right call. That’s why getting knocked unconscious and then waking up in unfamiliar surroundings here doesn’t automatically mean that you’re going to be at the mercy of some demented cultists, that you’re about to be offered up as bait, or that you’re being prepped for organ removal surgery. Instead, as is the case for Sam and Eric, it means waking up in a reassuring place of worship, where everyone is silently praying and watching out for one another. In that sense, it couldn’t be further removed from the experiences that Furiosa or Lucy MacLean undergo in their respective wastelands.
This unusually sensitive, soulful take on the end of the world might not be too big a departure for the writer-director of Pig, but it’s certainly surprising for a movie that prominently lists Michael Bay in its credits. And I for one found its uplifting philosophy and unshakable faith in humanity to be a welcome breath of fresh air.
A Quiet Place: Day One is now available on Digital at home.
The post Seeking Pizza at the End of the World: How ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ Brings Hope to the Apocalypse appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.