Okay, director/writer/star John Krasinski’s 2018 A Quiet Place harvested some major horror kudos for originality, acting and, it must be said, hardly any of that pesky exposition. Likewise, 2020’s A Quiet Place Part II came in at above average for a sequel. So no surprise that we’re now in for the inevitable prequel. What is surprising is how well this one works as a stand-alone.

As the title suggests, the film chronicles the events of the day the vicious, blind aliens that hunt by sound first appeared on Earth. Other than these shared elements, there’s little to bind this one to the previous (okay, subsequent) films, but it’s a well-crafted creature feature that adheres to the spirit of the franchise.

There’s a lot of requisite CG violence and white-knuckle terror. But the story is gracefully told through the eyes of a woman in the final stages of cancer, and the soulful performance by Lupita Nyong’o goes a long way toward making all this work. (And no small credit goes to a scene-stealing service cat named Frodo.) (100 min)