(Warning: Spoilers ahead for A Quiet Place: Day One.)
There are many different subsections of horror movies, and things that are scary to some might not be scary to others. Zombies might scare some, but might bore others. Evil robots? Definitely not for everyone, though they should be. Even Nic Cage is scary to certain people. But there is one universal truth when it comes to horror movies: the animal literally cannot die. They just can’t. So whatever dog sidekick or cat companion tagging along, they better survive, or else the internet will hear about it.
The scary part of A Quiet Place: Day One is, allegedly, the invasion of the sonically sensitive creatures, but the real fear is that the Lupita Nyong’o’s cute little cat will not make it to the end. It would take one ill-timed “meow” and the whole thing is ruined.
Luckily, Frodo the cat was in good hands, and he makes it through the invasion safely. Director Michael Sarnoski, who previously worked with a pig on Pig, so you know he knows his stuff, said that the cat was always intended to survive.
When asked if there was a chance Frodo would perish, Sarnoski told The Hollywood Reporter, “No. It always made sense that the cat is passed along and would carry on. If you’re gonna kill an animal, it’s got to be for a really meaningful reason. Otherwise, you’re just being cruel to the audience. He meant something to these characters, and I think it would have just been mean to kill him.”
Mean, yes, realistic? Also yes. It would not have been far-fetched for the kitty to abandon his human pals and fend for himself, but he stuck around. Things were made a little bit harder, though, when Sarnoski learned that Nyong’o is very scary of cats. “Lupita was terrified of cats. She wasn’t just ‘not a fan.’ She was really frightened,” the director explained. “And in one of our first meetings, she was sitting on the floor of my office and slowly crawled towards the cat getting a little closer, a little closer, until she finally touched it, and then eventually she was petting it and could pick it up. And now she has a pet cat of her own. It showed how brave she was and how willing she was to commit to this role.”
On the other hand, Frodo was also committed to his role and learned how to eat pizza on command. Where’s his Oscar nom?