Based on a scenario he co-wrote with John Krasinski, Michael Sarnoski is the writer and director of the 2024 American post-apocalyptic horror film A Quiet Place: Day One. This third movie in the A Quiet Place series acts as a precursor to the first movie and spin-off. In addition to Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, and Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsou plays the same character from A Quiet Place Part II (2020) in this movie. The story follows a terminally ill lady in the early phases of an alien invasion of New York City by blind beings with keen hearing.

In this film, Sam, a cancer patient with a terminal illness, resides in a New York City hospice with her service cat, Frodo. Reuben, a caregiver, persuades a reticent Sam one day to go on a group excursion to Manhattan in exchange for pizza in the city. They board a private bus together. Feeling disturbed by the puppet performance they are witnessing at a theater, Sam walks away and retrieves the bus. Reuben and the other group members will soon follow him, since they have been instructed to return to the hospice for an unspecified urgent cause.

Later on, Sam awakens beside Frodo and the other survivors inside the theater. Everyone is silent, and fellow survivor Henri gestures for her to keep quiet. Military helicopters hovering overhead provide warnings to inhabitants to remain concealed and silent until help arrives. In order to keep the animals on the island, the bridges leading out of the city are blasted. Henri kills one of the survivors by mistake while trying to calm down a panicked survivor.

Sam goes for Harlem with Frodo after a beast kills Reuben. Because the animals can’t swim, the military declares that boats are getting ready to evacuate residents from the south side of the city. As people begin to leave the buildings in the direction of the evacuation site, the sheer number of people moving in close proximity to one another alerts the animals, who then attack them and instigate a stampede. Sam runs away from Frodo, going in the other direction.

An English law student named Eric emerges from a flooded subway doorway. When he comes upon Frodo, he pursues him to Sam. Shell-shocked, Eric follows Sam to her apartment, where she expects to get pain relief, despite her attempts to persuade him to go to the evacuation point. Later, Sam and Eric decide to journey together to Harlem, barely escaping the beasts along the way. While traveling, Eric stops at a neighboring drugstore to pick up Sam’s prescription. Then Sam tells Eric that she used to go to a club and hear her late father play jazz, and then they would go to Patsy’s Pizza for pizza together.

Even if Patsy’s is totally burned, Eric grants Sam’s desire. Two boats nearby are noticed by Eric and Sam; on them are people getting ready to jump. Creatures begin to gather close as the two depart together. After giving Frodo to Eric, Sam flees, shattering vehicle windows to divert the beasts’ attention. Henri pulls Eric, who is holding Frodo, onto one of the boats when he leaps into the sea. Inside his jacket, Eric discovers a message from Sam, praising him for encouraging Frodo to live and advising him to keep caring for her.

A little later, Sam enters an empty street while listening to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” through headphones that are connected to an iPod. Sam removes the iPod’s earphone jack while standing in the middle of the road, grinning and waiting for the thing to show up. Abruptly, something materializes behind her.

November 2020 saw the start of production on A Quiet Place: Day One, which Jeff Nichols was slated to write and direct. Nichols finished writing the script by May 2021, however he was fired from the movie in October 2021 for artistic disputes. Sarnoski was recruited by Krasinski due of his indie feature directorial debut, Pig (2021), and it was revealed in January 2022 that he would take over as writer and director in lieu of Nichols. In London, England, principal photography was conducted in February and April of 2023.

On June 26, 2024, A Quiet Place: Day One made its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival. On June 28, 2024, Paramount Pictures distributed the film in the US. Critics gave the movie favorable reviews.