One of the great strengths of John Krasinski’s original Quiet Place, beyond its ruthlessly effective premise, was the decision to set the film far into the post of its post-apocalyptic setting. Day 472. The world belonged to the monsters, humanity had adapted to survive. Detail was scant on the hows and whys, with imagination encouraged to fill the gaps. That it has taken the franchise just three films to pull the prequel card might, then, feel a touch depressing. Or, rather, it would were Krasinski and incoming writer-director Michael Sarnoski not smart enough to know that themselves. A Quiet Place: Day One is less origins tale than intimate character study with a narrative that could only exist with the first forty-eight hours of invasion.

It’s said intimacy, set against a bigger and more physically destructive backdrop than Krasinski’s films, that enriches Day One. There are hints at a global response, and of the broader ramifications in the world ending, but only in the periphery, in the spinning of a labelled globe or radio receipts from communities further afield. Instead a touch of the War of the Worlds – not least owing to a New York setting – pervades. 28 Days Later too. The result is very quickly, very emotively, involving, aided by a directorial approach keen to root the viewer in the street and the immersion of crisis. All smoke, sediment and smart camerawork.

Manhattan makes for a smart choice to this end, boasting a universality of experiential recognition unlike any other felled metropolis. With an opening sprawl comparing the city’s daily volume to be at the level of a constant scream, the silence that falls feels all the more profound. Captured in the melee is a love for the city itself. It’s in the gorgeous depths of Pat Scola’s cinematography and the funerary thrum of Alexis Grapsas’ score. A dozen supervillains have uprooted New York before now but it’s never hurt like this.

Trudging the devastation, Lupita Nyong’o proves pitch perfect casting. Nyong’o skill for wide eyed horror is, of course, already well known – look only to Jordan Peele’s Us – but here it is layered with deeper and earthier pains. She plays Samira, a terminally ill poet, waiting to die, as the film opens, in a cancer hospice on the outskirts of town. Aside from Alex Wolff’s endlessly patient nurse, Reuben, Samira’s sole companion in life is her cat Frodo. Memories of a happier youth, eating pizza as her father played merry melodies on a communal piano, linger but there’s little else. To a soul on the cusp, the end of civilisation can but feel a greatly extrapolated metaphor. It’s a meatier premise than most.

Along the way, Sam meets Eric, who is played by a puppy eyed Joseph Quinn, of Stranger Things renown. A tenderness builds between them but it’s a slow and intensely watchable burn. Thrilling that the chases and bombast are throughout the film, it is those scenes of quiet, chemical connection that hit hardest and will hold longest. By far the strongest scene in Day One is that in which Sam and Eric take turns to scream in a storm, each using the strike of thunder to mask the decibels of their desperation. A later church-set communion veers more towards contrived, as does the inclusion of the perpetually at risk Frodo, but the pair excel no less.

What this proves, of course, is that the success of the franchise relies less on the premise than how it is handled. Without the beating heart of human interest, A Quiet Place could so easily descend to the monotony of quiet, quiet, quiet…bang. It’s not tense if you don’t care. On the basis of Day One, however, Krasinski and co. do care. Better still, they know how to make us care too. That’ll take them far.