without the new Voice will drive you to tears

John Krasinski didn’t (re)invent sliced ​​bread, but he managed to come up with a concept that highlighted the 2018 Without voicefrom the horror dumping flooding multiplexes. We exchanged tickets for one movie, but got two: a brutally tense invasion horror with blind monsters in the role of mummies and a family survival drama. No one could have been surprised that the sequel was made right away, but few probably expected that the second part written by Krasinski was in no way inferior to the first.

The third part of the franchise was announced as a prequel, which may have given some cause for concern, especially since Krasinski no longer took on the directorial duties. The excitement of the first act was given by the novelty of the concept and the fact that we could gradually get to know the laws of this new world, while we could bite our nails to the bone, excited for the fate of the protagonist’s family. In the sequel, on the one hand, there was still someone to push, as we could follow the same characters (spoiler: minus Krasinski’s family man), and the mythology building with new locations and new colonies also began.

In comparison, returning to the first day, i.e. the arrival of the strangers, did not seem like a forward move in any sense of the word. From a producer’s point of view, this is of course the potential jackpot itself, because the global invasion can be told endless times, from endless points of view – see the one that uses a similar dramaturgical trick The Walking Dead and the example of its spin-offs. On the other hand, as a viewer looking for new stimuli, it is not very exciting to experience a story in such a way that we already know where it starts and where it ends, and the monsters themselves cannot cause any surprises.

Both Krasinski, who co-wrote the screenplay, and new director Michael Sarnoski were aware of this pitfall, and instead of producing a generic sequel on autopilot, they took a bold step. On the one hand, they changed the location, which gave one of the special features of the first two acts, and the forest, small town environment was placed in the city of New York, which has already been destroyed dozens of times in the history of film. At the same time, the focus was not broadened, in fact, instead of a family and a small colony, we follow a single woman and her cat, and the man who attacks them later. The truly radical change after all, not this, but the it means recalibrating the motivation of the protagonists.

In a survival film, not surprisingly, the protagonists want to survive. But what if the life of a person who is already waiting for death is in danger? The main character of The First Day happens to be in this situation, Samira, played by Lupita Nyong’o, is a cancer patient receiving hospice treatment, and she leaves the facility where she is being cared for just to make one last visit to her favorite pizza place in Harlem. So when the strangers arrive and the panicked crowd wants to leave the city, he goes in the other direction, in the company of a man (Joseph Quinn), for whom escape is also not the most important thing.

Despite its unorthodox protagonists, it is First day it could even be an orthodox franchise continuation. Sarnoski has previously spoken openly about how regarding visuality The child of man was used as a queue leaderand not excessive. Cinematographer Pat Scola’s camera clings to the two protagonists (and the cat) in such a way that even the world burning in the background can be perfectly experienced, and when the action comes to the fore and the monsters attack in packs, the same level of tension is achieved as in the first two parts . Here, however, the emphasis is not on these moments, and not only because there are far fewer of them than in the episodes directed by Krasinski, but also because

the story is not structured in such a way that the alien attacks are the main attraction.

Sarnoski is more interested in how two strangers find each other, who at first are only connected by the fact that they are both forced to go their own way. The director’s first film, The Pig, also used a similar trick: the synopsis promised that the protagonist, played by Nicolas Cage, would deal with those who kidnapped his favorite pig in a John Wick mode, in comparison, the real drama took place within the character, and instead of shooting guns mourning work came to the fore. In The First Day, the stake is not whether Samira can escape, but how can he find peace of mind and what he’s looking for in a Harlem pizza joint. And for this character arc Lupita Nyong’o is the perfect choice: able to display all emotions even without words, thanks, among other things, to his huge, expressive eyes. Among other things, it is thanks to him and the no less convincing Joseph Quinn that we are able to overcome the minor and major illogicalities of the story.

It can be assumed that there will be viewers who appreciate this more melodramatic tone less, with more melancholic reflection on the passing of time and less action and tension, especially since the trailers and marketing materials promised further world-building, or at least that we can learn more about the aliens’ goals. . Sarnoski made another film, one that defies franchise logic and

tells a touching, deeply human story in the midst of a monster invasion.

Maybe we didn’t buy tickets for this particular movie, but why else would we go to the cinema if not to sometimes see and feel something that we haven’t before?