Disclaimer: This movie review contains spoilers for “A Quiet Place: Day One”
Table of Contents
Movie Review Intro: Horror and the Human Condition
Famous Catholic author JRR Tolkien once stated that “Human stories are practically always about one thing. . . Death. The inevitability of death. . .” And for the horror genre, that statement could not ring any truer. Death is around every rock, corner, and bump in the night. However, Paramount’s most recent installment to its Quiet Place film franchise, A Quiet Place: Day One, gives audiences a rather intimate view of what “Memento Mori” actually looks like. Who knew that pairing man-eating alien monsters with a grace-filled story about dying would be a match made in Heaven?
Hospice Without Hope: Sam’s Early Struggles
The film follows an ex-poet named Sam who, although still young, is dying from cancer. Her closest companion is her service animal, a cat not-so-subtly named “Frodo”. Made to spend the rest of her days in hospice, she lives alone in a place where every activity and attempt at true care seems to suck what little life she has left. Although hospices aim to comfort and care for the dying, Sam feels alone and believes this place mocks her. Even her attempts at poetry suck.
Here, the activities are shallow, and unfortunately, so are any attempts at true relationship. “You’re not my friend,” she tells one of the nurses there when he attempts to get her involved. Although he’s nice to her, Sam seems to sense that he, too, just works enough to “go with the flow.” He avoids any sense of depth in their relationship outside of offering her basic kindness and encouragement. So none of these things, even his well-intentioned efforts, seem to truly help her; instead, she is the one reminding everyone else in this place how this life is actively “passing away” with her dark humor and dry demeanor. But even then, her dryness only serves as a means of coping; she’s grown numb to the reality of her situation. Sure, she knows she’s due to die any day, but the truth behind “Memento Mori” has not yet reached her heart. She has no peace with all she’s to leave behind.
Silence as Salvation: The Spiritual Symbolism of Sound
Fortunately, she’s given the chance to tie loose ends, thanks to none other than New York’s very own alien invasion. Prevented from returning to the hospice during an outing in the city, Sam slowly watches those around her, including her nurse, die as she fumbles on during the chaos. If you know anything about the general lore of the Quiet Place universe, it’s good to point out that the monsters’ near-indomitable hearing attracts them to the slightest sound. And to top it off, Additionally, the lore calls them “death angels”, sent to earth in meteorites to wipe out all signs of life. In this universe, where even the slightest sound can kill you, silence is your best defense. Although dramatic, the writers aren’t too far from the sentiments of medieval monks when it comes to the dangerous effects of noise. The film opens with the statement that “New York gives off an average of 90 decibels. That is the volume of a constant scream”. In the contemplative tradition, practitioners prized cultivating silence to remove all distractions from their pursuit of God and peace. The prophet Elijah professed that
“. . .the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:11-12).
Carrying on that tradition, silence, especially in the form of silent retreats, has become a new panacea. And they’re also meant to be a humbling one. Author Matthew Kelly notes how
[F]or hundreds of years, if you attended a retreat or parish mission, you didn’t have to wonder what the opening topic might be. You would have known. It would have been on the Four Last Things. This was always the opening topic. . .more and more, we don’t reflect on these things at all, make great efforts to avoid them in conversation, and rarely hear them mentioned by spiritual teachers.1
A Forced Retreat: Confronting Mortality in the City
But unlike monks who willingly sought out peace and reflection in silent retreat from the world, the film abruptly forces the modern world into it, for better or worse. Everyone from the young to the old, the able to the disabled, the poor and the wealthy, are made to become aware of their own need for silent retreat as what it means to live every day going forward hangs in the balance. Every choice pursued is now full of intentionality with this new understanding. One minor character, a survivor of the initial onslaught that hit New York, has a nervous breakdown when he realizes the gravity of the situation, and ironically, it ends up being one of his fellow survivors who takes him out instead of their alien menaces. To say that the reality of death, the fact that you will die someday, is an uncomfortable one, would be an understatement. For some, like the nameless man who breaks down, the realization of it can actually be crippling. But Sam shows that it needn’t be the only choice we have in the face of it.
Her resolve heightened, she refuses to stay indoors any longer and sets out with her faithful Frodo. Although her reason for searching through the city instead of staying with her fellow survivors seems shallow (all she wants is a slice of pizza), it’s her desire behind it that moves her to begin her own silent retreat–one that would prepare her for death in a way she would not have expected otherwise.
At one point early along her way, she hitchhikes with a small crowd of refugees who are headed towards the coast for a rescue boat. However, as more refugees join the caravan, the combined noise of their travel is enough to eventually attract the death angels and promptly, all hell breaks loose. Their attack upon the defenseless survivors brings to mind “The Day of Judgement” by artist John Martin. Here, instead of simply contemplating death, Sam is actively made to witness it in her journey. She survives just barely underneath an abandoned car while Frodo hides elsewhere.
Not Meant to Journey Alone: Sam and Eric’s Unlikely Bond
Although she learns about the peril “going with the crowd” can bring, that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s meant to go it alone either, as she soon meets Eric, a former law student and disoriented survivor who also has no plans on reaching the coast. Despite her insistence on being by herself, Eric chooses to follow her like a dazed puppy as he has nowhere else to turn. “This wasn’t part of the plan,” he laments to her as they revisit her old apartment during a thunderstorm that muffles their conversation. And he’s right. Christ understood this better than anyone as he taught His followers not to “labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life” (John 6:27). Here, he learns to grapple with death too, not by toughing it on his own, but by helping her grapple with hers. It is here in this moment that he helps her when she needs help, he screams with her in the midst of her turmoil, and he reads aloud her old poetry, giving voice to the pain she feels surrounding her terminal illness:
“You said one to two years and it has been two.
You said four to six months and it has been six.
You said seven to eight weeks and it has been eight.
You said nine to ten days and it has been ten.
You said it would hurt and it does”2
Although she’s reluctant to allow anyone to be with her for long in her physical (and spiritual) journey, eventually letting Eric join her actually saves the last days of her life. Eric takes an interest in her life, her passions, and her situation in the present and accompanies her there as she continues her quest, even side-stepping his own goals to help her; in other words, he treats her like a human being with the dignity that is called for. He regards her illness with compassion. Not the cushy, well-meaning kind of compassion she received at her hospice, but in the genuine sense of the word: with a sincere and thorough willingness to suffer with her. In such chaotic and hapless circumstances where most people’s natural instincts would be to focus on their own self-preservation at all costs, Eric is something of a black sheep, to say the least. Given more than an opportunity to try to leave the city, he instead chooses again and again to stay by the side of this random sick woman, offering her anything she might need in those moments, even after she shoos him away.
The Cathedral and the Cross: Facing Illness and Grace
Providence led the two survivors (and a cat) to a cathedral after their particularly intense escape from multiple death angels via the flooded New York subway system. Occupied by other survivors and still standing amidst the wreckage of the city, it almost seems as though it has remained untouched by the invasion (save for the gaping hole in its roof). Here is where Sam’s retreat begins to get serious as she’s led directly to face her sickness and poverty–and not just in the physical sense. Silence eliminates outside distractions (or, in this case, the aliens outside their doorstep), giving Sam the chance to face her soul.
Severely weakened and half-awake; the next scene opens with what appears to be a priest praying quietly over her. Although his words aren’t audible, his unseen presence in her moment of need acts as if she were receiving her last rites before death. When she fully regains consciousness, it is here again when Eric’s generosity shines. He offers himself to her once more by volunteering to find her medication while she rests in the church. He has to traverse through a hellscape that is an alien hive to get back to her; nevertheless, he gets it. And it’s in a soft moment of love when he shows her the medication he’s won and applies it for her that she’s finally moved to open up to him more – and to her own process of true healing.
A Slice of Love: Pizza, Memory, and the Power of Connection
SAM: I loved when [my father] took me to see him play. At a jazz club by Patsy’s. Then after, we’d get pizza.
ERIC: Pizza… What happened to him?
SAM: He died. Like I am now.
ERIC: Not before we get pizza.
It is here that we find out why getting pizza matters to her–it was a way of connecting with her deceased father. Connection. After living alone in a rather inhospitable excuse for hospice care, human connection was the only thing Sam was willing to risk life for in the invaded city when everyone else fled for theirs, even if she only acknowledged the deep need subconsciously. And this is where the film stops becoming a mere horror story and more so becomes a human one instead.
After they leave the church and find the wreckage that is left of Patsy’s pizzeria, Sam is crushed. Hardly anything of it is left, and so it seems like any chance she had of reconnecting with her father is ruined as well. But it is in this moment of heartbreak that that love–specifically the love Eric has for her in her sorrow–is given a chance to flourish. Instead of giving up, Eric once again chooses to offer himself to her by sitting with her and holding her in her grief. Later, he finds the very jazz club her and her father would frequent. When they enter together, the place is immaculate. Drinks still stand quietly on the table, half finished. All the decor remains untouched and in place. There is even a charging port on the bar counter that has enough energy left for Sam to charge her iPod in.
As Sam continues to explore the nightclub, rekindling old memories of more peaceful times, Eric coyly surprises her with a stale, but intact, whole pizza, retrieved from a different pizzeria nearby that had survived the invasion. As they enjoy the meal together, he even puts on a small show for her on the club stage, pantomiming card tricks for her enjoyment. It’s an adorable display of love, and for the duration of it, it seems as though the club has remained open for one more day. It’s hard to remember that this film is a horror flick at all. This scene reveals the progress Sam has made—not against man-eating aliens, but against the despair and cynicism that had defined her life until that point. Eric’s decision to make her last days filled with renewed hope and joy by his accompaniment highlights the real heart of what this film, and ultimately, what our own earthly sojourns, is about – relationship.
Wearing Each Other’s Wounds: The Impact of Love
Throughout the last quarter of the film, Sam and Eric are shown wearing each other’s sweaters–Eric her cardigan and Sam his suit jacket–subtly symbolizing the impact each has made on the other. From now on, the relationship they shared, though brief, is something both will carry with them as they part ways. For Eric, he will remember Sam and how she helped him in the end to rejoin the refugee boat by distracting the death angels from him** (and through her gifting him Frodo, whom he carries within her sweater onto the boat). As for Sam, she dies wearing his jacket, allowing the death angels to take her as she plays Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” on her iPod out loud. As Catholics who value the dignity of all human life up until natural death, the morality of Sam’s suicide is certainly not to be lauded, but the lyrics of the song that play during the last moments of the film speak to the moral significance of her spiritual journey.
“It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life, and I’m feeling good.”
Conclusion: Memento Mori and the Judgment of Love
Sam’s spiritual “retreat” throughout New York City teaches her, and us, something that the saints have emphasized throughout Christian history: “In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.”3 The only thing any of us will bring with us into the afterlife is how much we loved, meaning that the only thing that ultimately gives meaning to our lives on Earth now are the people in it and our relationships with them. Afterall, being in the right relationship with God and with others is the greatest commandment, is it not? And though many of those reading this most likely won’t be dying today, A Quiet Place: Day One reminds us that “Memento Mori” rings truer and louder when we take the time to quiet ourselves so that we can hear it.
Footnotes:
- 33 Days to Eucharistic Glory
- Thanks to u/c1army for transcribing this on reddit
- St. John of the Cross