A Quiet Place: Day One, the prequel to the John Krasinski-directed post-apocalyptic series about blind aliens with superpowered hearing, premiered in theaters in June. It was fine. The film takes place on the first day of the invasion, documenting the early days in New York City as humanity desperately tries to survive. Black Panther’s Lupita Nyong’o and Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn are strong leads, and while Day One does fall into a rhythm of cheap deaths and predictable setpieces, I appreciated when it delved into pathos and the need for human connection at the worst of times. But now I’ve seen a deleted scene that would have added more depth to Quinn’s character, and I see it as a missed opportunity to speak to that need for human connection when deadly monsters aren’t raining from the sky.
Content warning: suicide
The scene in question premiered on People, and shows Quinn’s character Eric telling Nyong’o’s Samira about why he was dressed up in a suit and tie on the day of the invasion. Initially, Samira asks if he was on the way to a job interview, but his destination wasn’t quite so hopeful.
He tells her that he came to New York City to be “accepted,” having not been in the small town he grew up in. He says his dad “had an idea of the sons that he wanted,” and he wasn’t like that. In New York, he says, people didn’t mind “that part” of him, but yet he still felt so lonely in the city. “I don’t have a home anywhere. I was really tired of feeling alone and just bored of feeling alone. So I thought it would be easier not to live anywhere.”
The implication here is that as a gay man, Eric wasn’t accepted in his small hometown, and even after coming to New York City, he still felt alone. Before the calamity began, he was planning to end things. In an interview with Film Speak, Director Michael Sarnoski confirmed Eric’s queerness and said he intentionally didn’t want the movie’s leads to have a romance. But I’m really bummed this scene didn’t make it into the final film, because not only is it a well-acted scene, but it speaks so profoundly to the truth of the character’s situation.
As a gay man who moved to New York City for identical reasons, and has been feeling a similar sense of loneliness as Eric describes, I would have been inconsolable in the theater seeing this scene. Gays from small towns dream of moving to the city and finding their people, and yes, while there are certainly days when I feel like I have, there are a lot of timeswhen I still struggle with feeling like I’ve yet to find my home. Being in an overwhelming city, a culture shock compared to where you once were, means a lot of feeling like the life you want is still just out of reach, even though it’s in walking distance. But it can take time to find, and I know how Eric was feeling when he headed down to the subway just before the invasion. It’s a shame fewer people will see this scene, buried in the special features of a digital copy.
A Quiet Place: Day One is now streaming on digital platforms.
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