A Quiet Place: Day One Is Gloriously, Blissfully, Mercifully Short – Take Note, Movies

I love long movies. Some of my favorite movies of all time have monster runtimes. Oliver Stone's "JFK," which has a director's cut that runs 205 minutes, is a movie I can rewatch over and over and over again. Ditto David Fincher's "Zodiac," which has a director's cut that's a whopping 2 hours and 40 minutes. Hell, my all-time-favorite movie is Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas," which clocks in at 146 minutes. 

And yet, at the same time, movies these days can seem, well ... too long. I genuinely subscribe to the mantra of the late, great Roger Ebert, who once wrote, "No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough." But gosh, sometimes, I wish movies would just hurry the f**k up. Maybe that's a "me" problem. Maybe my attention span has been shot to hell. I don't know. But when a modern blockbuster movie comes out these days, it's almost always guaranteed to run more than 2 hours, and more often than not, it clearly doesn't have to be. Not helping matters is the fact that movie theaters show a seemingly endless series of pre-show content. 

I live in the Philadelphia/Southern New Jersey region, and the predominant theater chain around these parts is the AMC (note: Drafthouse, please open in Philly, I'm begging you). When you sit down to watch a movie at an AMC, you get approximately 30 to 40 minutes of trailers and commercials (I'm not exaggerating here; I've timed it on multiple occasions). So when you factor in a movie that's 2+ hours and about 30 minutes of trailer content, a moviegoer like myself can often end up spending 3+ hours at the theater. Now, I know some of you are saying, "Hey, idiot, just show up late!" But I just can't do that. My stupid brain won't let me. I need to be there on time. And then I suffer. 

Which brings us to "A Quiet Place: Day One."

This week, I went to a press screening of "A Quiet Place: Day One" (you can read my review right here). Now, thankfully, most press screenings do not have trailers, so that shaves off some time. But, this being the age of the bloated blockbuster, I fully expected the film to clock in at over 2 hours. With the screening starting around 7 PM, I was bracing myself to not get home until well after 10. Right after I parked my car at the theater, I brought out my phone and googled "'A Quiet Place: Day One' runtime." Reader, a wave of relief washed over me when I saw the results: 1 hour and 39 minutes.

Perhaps I should've expected this. The original "A Quiet Place" is 90 minutes, and the sequel, "A Quiet Place Part II" is 97 minutes. But I genuinely thought I was going to sit down for a 2 hour+ movie. Again: there's nothing wrong with long movies. But sometimes, you want something direct and to the point. And that's one of the things that works in favor of "A Quiet Place: Day One." Michael Sarnoski's script is tight and economical — it doesn't waste much time. In fact, some might consider it sparse — I've seen multiple reviews that complain the movie doesn't provide much backstory for the alien invades. To me, that's a feature, not a bug. I don't need more backstory. In fact, adding more backstory would rob the movie of its power. Sometimes, the simplest solution is the best.