Lupita Nyong’o stars as a poet with cancer who wants to live a little in this beefed-up disaster movie set in New York

It could be the idea of setting the Quiet Place prequel in New York, one of the noisiest places on Earth. Or perhaps it’s because the intimate, taut horror premise of the first two pictures is beefed up with some robust city-smashing disaster movie muscle. Maybe it’s the casting of the always excellent Lupita Nyong’o in a textured and complex role – she plays Sam, a poet and a terminal cancer patient who just wants to live a little before she dies. All of this combines to ramp up the impact of A Quiet Place: Day One considerably, compared with its immediate predecessor. It’s a bleak, bruising but also curiously life-affirming account of the start of the end of the world. The directing baton has been passed to Michael Sarnoski (Pig), who co-wrote the film’s deft, light-footed screenplay with the original writer/director, John Krasinski. And while there are a couple of underdeveloped plot points (the discovery of an alien egg nursery is rather thrown away) and an over-reliance on Sam’s unfeasibly unflappable cat as a device, for the most part, this is a stylish and satisfying prequel that elegantly integrates Sam’s poet’s sensibility into the storytelling.

• In UK and Irish cinemas now

The latest in the alien-terror series finds Lupita Nyong’o connecting with stranger Joseph Quinn as the monsters terrorise a city into trembling silence

The hideous novelty is leaking a little from what now has to be called the Quiet Place franchise, about humans of the future forced to live in a permanent state of tremblingly paranoid silence because they are terrorised by alien monsters who can’t see but will pounce at the slightest sound. This prequel, directed by Michael Sarnoski (the creator of Pig, starring Nicolas Cage) shows two strangers finding a connection on the very first day of the aliens’ attack; it is well made and well acted, with a fervent lead performance from Lupita Nyong’o.

Nyong’o plays Sam, a woman with cancer in hospice care, who is spiky and difficult with her nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff). When longsuffering Reuben takes Sam and other patients for a trip into New York for a treat (oddly, a marionette show – but with very few kids in the audience), the creepy, blind creatures attack. They cause apocalyptic chaos, and Sam finds herself randomly befriending a terrified British law student called Eric, played by the estimable Joseph Quinn, who gave such an intense performance in Luna Carmoon’s psychodrama Hoard.