TW: Mentions of suicide

August 1st - A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

5/5 (with deleted scene)

Originally, A Quiet Place: Day One was a 4/5 from me, with a small preference for the original A Quiet Place due to better execution of the soundscape and tension. However. A deleted scene was released that changed everything about the film for me.

Sam and Eric could have been perfect foils. A woman waiting to die, wishing she was still living, stranded in a home she hasn't seen in who knows how long. A man who has been here for ages but feels eternally out of place, alive but wanting to die. Two people in completely opposite situations, working together towards the same goal.

In the background of Sam and Eric's trek, there is the beating heart of a supportive community of people, those theatre goers who helped Sam in the first hours after the crisis, the same people who hug Eric as he swims to the boat, Sam helping the kids under the fountain, Reuben keeping Frodo safe and embracing Sam when he found out she was okay. Him running to turn off the generator to protect those in the building. Eric bringing Sam her medicine to manage her pain. Sam distracting the monsters so Eric could make it to the boat.

The movie is centered around death, wanting to live in the face of death. At the end of the film, Sam thanks Eric for helping her live again, and with the added context of his suicidal thoughts, she helped him live again too. Everything builds towards the scene in the jazz club, where we see both Sam and Eric truly smile and laugh for the first time. This is when they both decide to live, for their own sakes, in the face of their deaths, not just at the hand of the monsters. When Sam and Eric part ways, they are wearing each others jackets. Sam takes the jacket Eric wore for his suicide, knowing she is going to die and taking that burden from him, not suicidal herself but at peace with her death. Eric, in turn, wears Sam's yellow sweater, the same sweater that used to belong to her dad, a sweater that lets them both symbolically live on with Eric.

These themes, both of death and community, are not ineffective without the deleted scene. Far from it, Sam carries so much of that emotional core with her. However, these themes are made stronger by adding depth to Eric, and I can't understand why such a small moment was removed.