A Quiet Place has been a franchise demonstrating the horror of a mindless alien invasion, creatures more like locusts than the common intelligent threat we are subjected to in most such films.

The first two films focused on a family whose members were familiar with silence, since their oldest daughter was deaf. Those films featured, John Krasinski and Emily Blunt. Communicating through sign, they survived what has to be the most devastating event in Human history, the invasion of Earth by a nearly unstoppable, non-Human foe, numerous, rapacious and arbitrarily destructive.

Four hundred days into the invasion, humanity appears all but defeated but tiny outposts of humanity lingered on, slowly being exterminated whenever they forget the first rule of survival: BE QUIET.

The aliens appear to be blind, but have an incredible sense of hearing, capable of hearing a cowbell ring miles away. Superhumanly strong, incredibly fast, tireless and bullet-resistant, it would take only a few to devastate small communities in the suburbs.

The first two films give us the struggles of a family as they fight for survival and perhaps discover a potential weakness in what has been up to this moment an enemy more akin to a natural disaster like a flood or hurricane: all humanity can do it try to survive the event.

The third film in the franchise is being released in June and it takes us back to Day One of the invasion, but this time, in a major metropolis (presumably New York) but it could be any major city on Earth. The enemy arrives in cataclysmic waves in a “shock and awe” causing people to run about madly, screaming at the top of their lungs from the aliens explosive landings and their terrifying appearance.

Alas, running and screaming are two of the worst things you could do.

This trailer opens with Lupita Nyong’o and a feline companion moving through New York as the heavens open, raining down meteors upon an unsuspecting public. Having seen what comes out, we are not surprised by the creatures, but we go along for the ride as the explosions resemble a military attack on a major city. Unlike our previous installments, this movie appears to want to saturate you in the sheer terror and helplessness of the event.

Yes, I know this is, in its way problematic due to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, but I suspect this film was a project before both of those wars came into being.

Having watched the first two films, I am eager to see what kind of defense humanity put up before the status quo of hiding for survival became the go-to for our species. I saw a number of military jets fighting and bombing the creatures, but it also means they were bombing civilians, which probably didn’t help their cause at all.

These creatures could be killed but the opening sequence implies there are thousands, maybe millions raining down upon the Earth. With the subsequent movies already in existence, the one thing you know you won’t have to worry about is the Human race winning this battle.

We lost. Badly. Perhaps this film will give us some specifics.

Who or what these invaders are, what they want, how they got here. Are they an alien infestation or a biological weapon sent by an intelligent species who has yet to arrive?

If they are space locusts moving from world to world, without faster than light travel, they take millions of years to reach other habitable worlds, which implies they are well-adapted to the void of space, capable of surviving strikes by particles in space.

Given they survived the heat of reentry, and hop out of their landing crater, mere seconds after arrival means half of our weapons shouldn’t mean a whole lot to them.

This should be a rout and personally, I can’t wait to watch us fight for our survival. The more horrifying thought remains, if they aren’t space locusts, but instead biological weapons, who sent them?

The only thing left to know is HOW humanity lost this war and whether any plucky scientifically-trained Humans survived to let humanity fight back in A Quiet Place: Part IV – The Silent War.

This film stars Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Djimon Hounsou, Adam Arkin, Alex Wolff, and is directed by Michael Sarnoski, who wrote the screenplay based on an original story by John Krasinsky and Sarnoski. The film is a co-production between Paramount Pictures, Sunday Night Productions, and Platinum Dunes.

Paramount Pictures plans to release A Quiet Place: Day One in theaters in the United States on June 28, 2024.

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