Sarnoski, Michael

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    This Service Cat Has a Big Job: The Apocalypse

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    The director of “A Quiet Place: Day One” was confident a cat could take on the end of the world. But could the feline actors win over Lupita Nyong’o?How did a cat named Schnitzel win the starring role of Frodo in “A Quiet Place: Day One”? He impressed the director Michael Sarnoski with his nonchalant confidence, rugged looks and intelligent face.“He had a lot going on behind his eyes,” Sarnoski said in an interview last week, when the film made its theatrical debut. “A lot of the other cats were really adorable but almost too cutesy, like they would be in a cat food commercial. And Schnitzel had a little bit of an edge, like you could kind of believe he was a bit of a world-weary street cat.”Frodo has a lot to be weary about in this cinematic universe. The film, a prequel to the 2018 horror movie “A Quiet Place” and its 2021 sequel, chronicles aliens invading Earth and attacking everything that makes a sound.Lupita Nyong’o plays Sam, a cancer patient caught in the apocalypse with her service cat while visiting New York. Though most people want to escape Manhattan, Sam knows she is dying regardless and just wants to go to Harlem, where she grew up, and grab a slice of pizza. She meets a British law student named Eric (Joseph Quinn), who agrees to join her, and the cat becomes a comfort to them both. (Sam is a poet, hence Frodo’s literary name.) And spoiler warning: Audiences will be happy to know Frodo makes it out alive.Sarnoski, who also wrote the screenplay, grew up with cats and knew he wanted Sam to have an animal companion. But the creature would need to be able to navigate an urban apocalypse in silence. A dog would bark at a threat, and something like a bunny, say, wouldn’t fit in the grit of Manhattan. But it’s common to see cats around the city, wandering the streets or guarding delis. Frodo even meets a bodega cat, played by a ginger-and-white shorthair named Stanlee, a runner-up for the lead role.“A lot of people are like, ‘Why doesn’t the cat make more noise?’ But cats are very smart, predatory creatures,” Sarnoski said, adding that he believed a cat would recognize the danger and figure out how to survive. “I figured a cat would have a shot.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ Review: Lupita Nyong’o Commands the Screen

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      The chills are more effective than the thrills in this prequel to the “A Quiet Place” franchise.The cat. It’s all about the cat.No matter what else happens in “A Quiet Place: Day One,” no matter how sensational Lupita Nyong’o is — and she is — her character’s feline buddy is going to take over the story and, likely, the discourse around it.Mind you, there also was a cat, Jones, in “Alien,” a movie that’s a major influence on the “Quiet Place” universe — one in which aliens land on Earth and massacre everybody for no reason besides sheer killing instinct. John Krasinski’s “A Quiet Place” (2018) and “A Quiet Place Part II” (2021) laid down the basic parameters, mainly that the creatures’ extremely developed hearing makes up for their blindness, and they hate bodies of water.But Jones was peripheral to “Alien,” the masterpiece that kicked off a franchise revolving around body invasion. Our fearless new hero is very much embedded in the theme running through all three “Quiet Place” movies: the importance of family, whether biological or chosen.In Michael Sarnoski’s prequel, Frodo (played by both Nico and Schnitzel) is the support cat of Samira (Nyong’o), a New York City poet living in crippling cancer-induced pain in a hospice. She takes Frodo everywhere, including an outing to a puppet show, where the audience members include a man (Djimon Hounsou) whom viewers of the second movie will instantly recognize. When the invasion begins, he is quick to impart the importance of making as little noise as possible to avoid alerting the attackers.Somehow borne on meteorites (don’t ask), the aliens immediately get down to their gruesome business. The movie allows us a few good looks at the toothy monsters, who made me think of hellish Giacometti sculptures. But otherwise Sarnoski (who made the endearing Nicolas Cage drama “Pig”) does not add all that much crucial new information to their basic character sheet — “Day One” is refreshingly free of origin story explaining.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More