Michael Sarnoski makes genre films that spend more time with troubled people than with the threats around them. We value his tenderness towards those people, though his scripts can keep them brooding after we have understood why.
Fi1m perspective
In A Quiet Place: Day One (2024), New York’s horns and helicopter noise give way to breathing and a cat’s bell. Pat Scola shoots the street in flat midday light before falling ash turns the people into grey shapes. We flinched at the first attack because that sudden quiet makes every small sound seem dangerous. Sarnoski is also interested in Samira, played by Lupita Nyong’o, and her insistence on getting pizza. We like that attention to an ordinary appetite during an invasion: it gives us someone to care about before another creature arrives.
His feature debut, Pig (2021), written from a story co-written with Vanessa Block, had already turned a revenge premise towards quiet encounters. John Krasinski approached him for A Quiet Place: Day One, and Sarnoski brought that concern for human company into a franchise prequel. The result is our favourite of the first three films, with Nyong’o carrying a sad, tender two-hander. But the creatures remain dull, and the attacks grow repetitive in the second half.
His patience becomes a problem in The Death of Robin Hood (2026). Sarnoski, again writing and directing, gives Hugh Jackman an ageing outlaw whose remorse occupies more of the drama than it can sustain. Jodie Comer’s Sister Brigid supplies warmth and makes forgiveness seem possible for a man we have reason to distrust. Sarnoski gets tenderness from both leads, enough to make the film worth considering. Too many conversations, though, tell us how badly Robin feels without giving him another question to face.
Andrew Mondshein’s editing gives Robin’s reflection time to settle, then leaves it sitting for too long; Jim Ghedi’s music cannot make the repeated regret develop into something new. Sarnoski needs to let a conversation change what his characters want, rather than simply confirm what hurts them. We would not ask him to lose the tenderness, which is the reason to follow his work. Start with A Quiet Place: Day One for Nyong’o and the unnerving use of silence, with modest expectations of the monsters.
Biography
Michael Sarnoski is an American filmmaker. He wrote and directed the drama Pig (2021), starring Nicolas Cage, and the horror film A Quiet Place: Day One (2024).
Sarnoski made his feature directorial debut with Pig, which was released by Neon. He was subsequently hired by John Krasinski to write and direct A Quiet Place: Day One, a prequel in the franchise. His next project is The Death of Robin Hood (2026).
For Pig, Sarnoski received the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay and the National Board of Review Award for Best Directorial Debut.
