The silently horrific, post-apocalyptic landscape of A Quiet Place is set to haunt audiences again in 2023. The first two films were directed by The Office star John Krasinski, who admitted in a Screen Rant interview admitted that he drew inspiration from his “new parent terror” after his wife, Emily Blunt, gave birth to their second daughter. The franchise so far definitely draws on parental anxiety and inspires curiosity as to what the spin-off, A Quiet Place: Day One, will look like.
In 2021, Krasinski said in another Screen Rant interview that he was “ecstatic” about Jeff Nichols taking over the third installment, and that Nichols would use “exactly the kind of paints you’re looking for in A Quiet Place,” Since then, though, Nichols has stepped down from the project, making room for rising director Michael Sarnoski. Sarnoski is best known for the 2021 film Pig, starring Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff, and Adam Arkin. Pig is written and directed by Sarnoski and contains the same uneasy tone audiences will look for in the next A Quiet Place installment.
So far, the franchise has established that the Abbott family exists in a post-apocalyptic world with their three children, one of whom is deaf. The most unsettling part about this world is that it is inhabited by blind, hungry creatures with powerful hearing. The Abbotts are doomed to live in a dense silence in order to stay alive and avoid being noticed. In the second film, the Abbott family continues without patriarch Lee (John Krasinski), and there are flashbacks to give more explanation to the alien takeover. The characters seek out other survivors and the ending is left open for potential continuation.
A Quiet Place: Day One hasn’t been described as anything other than a “spin-off” which will ostensibly follow different survivors, so it’s difficult to determine whether the same characters will be returning or if it will be an entirely different story altogether. Either way, with Michael Sarnoski helming the next installment, the movie is sure to be a success. Here is why Michael Sarnoski is the ideal director for A Quiet Place: Day One.
Pig is a Thriller But Has Emotional Depth
Although the Quiet Place movies are classified as horror flicks, there is an emotional depth to the films that adds to the terrifying nature of that reality. Despite going to great lengths to protect one another and stay quiet, the Abbotts suffer some losses and must grieve in silence. Without this attention to the way characters are grieving, A Quiet Place wouldn’t be the success that it was. Michael Sarnoski’s Pig also contains this emotional strife.
The film follows an isolated old man, played brilliantly by Nicolas Cage, who uses a pig to forage for truffles in the rural woods of Oregon. When his truffle pig is stolen, the man ventures out to find it. Like A Quiet Place, Pig explores grief with a main character who chooses his words very carefully, exhibiting little to no dialogue in most scenes.
When Sarnoski was writing the film, he admits in a Dread Central interview that he “was at a place in [his] life where [he] was seeing what grief had done to the people around [him]”. He combined this personal experience with the concept for Pig and created an effective thriller. This kind of technique will be perfect for A Quiet Place: Day One.
Michael Sarnoski Will Direct the Adaptation of the Graphic Novel Sabrina
Knowledge of Sarnoski’s talent is spreading fast throughout the film community. The release of Pig proved that he has immense flexibility and can balance drama with genre exercises, something he is being tasked with doing in an upcoming adaptation. Nick Drnaso’s graphic novel Sabrina follows the story of Teddy whose girlfriend, Sabrina, goes missing. Grief-stricken, Teddy goes to live with his recently divorced friend and Air Force airman, Calvin. A video of Sabrina’s murder is released a few days later, leaving Teddy and Calvin to endure the aftermath.
Sabrina’s film adaptation was announced in 2019, originally helmed by Drew Goddard, but as of 2022 the responsibility has been handed off to Sarnoski. The fact that future thrillers are being assigned to Michael Sarnoski indicates he has something special to bring to these works and is comfortable working in a pre-established universe. Simran Hans of The Guardian states that Sarnoski “values no-frills authenticity” and has an eye for “unadorned natural beauty” that will be ideal for A Quiet Place: Day One.
Reviewers Are Surprised by Sarnoski’s Work So Far
A review by Matt Zoller Seitz on Roger Ebert's website describes Sarnoski’s Pig as “never moving like you expect it to.” The movie opens with an isolated man, Rob, and his pig, and viewers are never sure what kind of reality they have entered into until Rob is forced to seek out his pet. Up until the point Rob travels to Portland, there is a strong focus on the woods without any indication that it is set in this reality, a post-apocalyptic one, or something else. This is exactly the kind of element of surprise (and mastery of the woodland setting) that is essential for the next A Quiet Place installments. Because the world has already been established, Michael Sarnoski’s unpredictable creativity will keep the franchise fresh.
While Michael Sarnoski doesn’t have an extensive body of work yet, his contributions and scheduled work so far have proved he is capable of powerful films that will leave an impression on audiences. A Quiet Place: Day One is set to be released in the fall of 2023.