The prequel “A Quiet Place: Day One” is full of heroes and monsters, but all I could focus on was the cat. The heroes are, let’s be fair, weirdly impressive: Samira (Lupita Nyong’o) is a cancer patient dying in hospice who yet is somehow able to walk extremely long distances across Manhattan, swim between flooded subway stations and run really fast while carrying her cat. Eric (Joseph Quinn) does all the same things, but while wearing a tie, because he is British (this is, alas, his only character note). These two are among the last humans left in New York after an alien invasion, involving monsters that look like what would happen if you put a gorilla and a giant spider in a blender (note to self: don’t do this) and who are reasonably good at racing up the sides of buildings and showing up in random places looking malevolent. But oh, that cat.

I am harping on the cat here, because there is nothing else to focus on in “A Quiet Place: Day One” — an indication that perhaps what made the first two “Quiet Place” movies work was writer/director John Krasinski, who here hands the reins (or, rather, the kitty leash) to Michael Sarnoski. This cat — named Frodo and played by feline actors Nico and Schnitzel, both of whom should be nominated for Oscars immediately — is the most chill creature ever to walk this earth: not batting a whisker at deafeningly loud space invasions, looking perfectly calm while immersed in the waters off the South Street Seaport, casting sympathetic glances at the humans who seem oddly discombobulated by the necessity of running for their lives. As a person whose cat practically requires therapy every time the vacuum cleaner is turned on, this fascinated me. Why was Frodo so clean and spotlessly white all the time, even as all of Manhattan — and Samira — was cloaked in gray dust? Was he secretly a Marvel Comics superhero cat? Does he just have a really good agent?

Anyway, I need not say that Nyong’o’s prodigious talents are sadly wasted in this noisy, pointless movie, which never approaches the cleverness — or the genuine scariness — of the first two in the franchise. The whole central premise of the monsters responding to sound doesn’t even make sense here, as Eric and Samira seem to be talking all the time; he even, in one misguided moment, starts reading poetry to her, as one does during times of interplanetary warfare. (At least I think it was poetry; honestly, at this point in the movie, who knew.) Anyway, would somebody please give Frodo his own franchise? I’d watch.

———

'A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE'

1.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for terror and violent content/bloody images)

Running time: 1:39

How to watch: Now in theaters

———

©2024 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.