Considering he started with an office desk job, John Krasinski has done pretty well for himself, especially with creating his A Quiet Place franchise.

The first two, which he directed, featured his real-life wife Emily Blunt playing a mom struggling with keeping her children quiet during an alien invasion. Kids eh.

This third entry goes right back to the beginning, as the title suggests, with the arrival of said aliens, who of course choose NYC as their first place to visit, because, well, you would wouldn’t you.

Living in a hospice facility on Long Island is Sam (Lupita Nyong’o); she has a terminal illness, and as you might expect, isn’t always in the best of moods.

She perks up a little at the prospect of going into the city, only on the condition of getting some pizza from a specific pizzeria. So a group board the bus, including her comfort cat Frodo, to see a show in NYC – and then get pizza.

However the show they see is interrupted, by of all things an alien invasion, which complicates all their plans. When all the others are wondering how they’re to get back to Long Island, Sam is in such a fragile place mentality where all she cares about is her pizza. So when there’s an opportunity to make a break for safety, Sam goes in the opposite direction, deep into alien territory, but she has a plan, she’s going to be real quiet...

Although this is indeed day one of the alien invasion, the story still isn’t in any mood to offer up any form of explanation as to why.

Instead it focuses on the interesting story of Sam, played magnificently by Nyong’o, and the notion of how does a person with a terminal illness deal with the end of the world? Although initially intriguing, it is rather on the niche side, and after a while, particularly when the story takes a meet cute turn – with the arrival of Eric, played by British actor Joseph Quinn, you really start to wonder what the aliens see in us.

But despite how mesmerising Nyong’o is, she is always upstaged by her cat Frodo, played by Schnitzel and Nico. Now obviously it’s always a cute addition having some kind of pet involved in the narrative, but Frodo’s role sparks more questions than everything else put together. For instance, cats are known to have a distinct dislike to getting wet, and yet Frodo could qualify for the US Olympic swimming squad. And then there’s the fact that cats are known to meow, which if you know the premise of the film where the aliens don’t notice those around them if they’re quiet, would make having one quite problematic if you’re keen on staying alive. But not Frodo, who is literally as quiet as a mouse throughout.

Perhaps it’s the fact that having a protagonist who is dying sadly isn’t as interesting as director Michael Sarnoski was hoping for. Not that Schnitzel and Nico care, as rumours abound that they’re being offered their own 10-part reality series on Netflix called The Cat’s Whiskers.

And even though it’s being built as an origin story, the aliens themselves don’t feel like they feature that much throughout, only used as props for the occasional jump scares.

The real stars of the film however has to be its sound department; watching the film with a surround sound system raises the entire experience to a whole new level, with the team, and no doubt the director too, knowing the importance of sound considering the lack of dialogue. So if you get the opportunity, that’s the best environ to watch it.

As much as this prequel is an entertaining experience, mostly down to the cats and sound system, you can’t help but feel that there was a stronger day one story to go with.

Perhaps much of it is down to the director’s inexperience, with this only being his second film and the follow up to his indie directorial debut Pig, and a big budget franchise like this may well have been just too big a jump for his second feature. To be fair he handles the visual side of things well, with the UK doing a fine job doubling for NYC, but with glaring issues regarding the story, perhaps Krasinski should have been on hand to finish the job.

An interesting direction for the franchise to move in for sure, that certainly has a lyrical charm, but although the premise may have sounded good at the time, this just wasn’t the place for it.

***We've a copy of A Quiet Place: Day One to be won in our latest competition. For your chance to win, enter here.***