A Quiet Place stunned audiences upon its release in 2018, grossing more than $350 million at the box-office worldwide. Its overnight success led to a sequel that hit cinema screens in 2020, as well as an upcoming prequel A Quiet Place: Day One, with a June 28 release date. Directed by The Office US alum John Krasinski, the original film follows the Abbott family, including father Lee (Krasinski), wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt), and children Marcus (Noah Jupe), Regan (FANGORIA Chainsaw Award Winner Millicent Simmonds), and Beau (Cade Woodward). After mysterious creatures overrule the Earth, humanity is all but wiped out, with survivors scattered across the globe and plunged into silence with the monstrous creatures drawn to any noise.
Following the tragic death of their youngest son Beau, the Abbotts have forged a simple existence, aided by their fluency in American Sign Language (ASL), thanks to their deaf daughter Regan. When Evelyn becomes pregnant, the family must create a safe space for her to give birth without attracting the attention of the creatures - the Death Angels.
The use of silence to create a sense of dread made A Quiet Place stand out among its peers, as well as its representation of deaf and hard-of-hearing people. But another element that ratcheted up the tension was the mystery surrounding the Death Angels, from what they looked like to where they came from as we're treated to terrifying glimpses just like the characters in the film. This disorienting way to include them in the narrative, paired with their sheer strength and vicious nature, is a recipe for an anxiety-inducing old time.
As the franchise continues with a sequel and a prequel, the antagonists become characters in their own right with a rich backstory and place within the film's ecosystem that shows Krasinski and his team's dedication to creating the fully-developed world of A Quiet Place. While we gear up to see where it all began, we will take you through everything you need to know to (hopefully) survive the Death Angels.
The Silence Phenomenon
A Quiet Place left much of the Death Angels' story ambiguous, with Krasinski giving Empire a unique insight into their backstory. Per Collider, he said: "They are absolutely aliens. They're from another planet. Where I developed the idea of them and what I wanted them to look like was most alien movies are about takeovers, agendas, they're a thinking alien creature, and for me this idea of a predator, this idea of a parasite, this idea of something that is introduced into an ecosystem [was interesting]. One of my favorite movies I love to watch is RocknRolla and they tell that whole story about the crawfish in the Thames and that's what I mean, the introduction of something that can't be held back."
The director shared that the aliens came to Earth after their planet had been destroyed, arriving on meteorites as they had evolved with an impenetrable armor that allowed them to travel through space. The origins of the Death Angels were confirmed in A Quiet Place 2 during a flashback to day one of the invasion, where Lee watches a TV broadcast about a giant meteor crashing into the Earth. Shortly after, the Abbott family is at a baseball game, which is thrown into chaos by a meteor flying through the sky, confirming multiple meteors carrying an unknown number of Death Angels crashed into the planet, rather than a solo meteor.
Due to the cold, dark nature of the planet they originated, the aliens evolved without eyesight to stay alive. But when one sense diminishes, the others grow stronger, and they have been left with incredibly sensitive hearing, meaning they will stop at nothing to eradicate the source of any sound.
Their incredible hearing works both to their advantage when they land on Earth, easily picking off humans as if swatting a fly, but also to their disadvantage (which we'll get to later).
Evolutionary Biology of Death Angels
The monsters stand taller than the average human and have lean proportions with incredibly long, skinny limbs and a posture similar to that of a gorilla or bat. They walk and run on all fours but are capable of taking their weight on their back legs and jumping an incredible distance to attack.
We also learn they are incredibly adept at climbing - whether that be trees, walls, or even glass panels - due to their claws.
Their heads feature no eyes and no apparent nose, in part due to the environment on their home planet, which led to them evolving to hunt using echolocation, thus making the sense of sight redundant. It is unclear whether they can smell or even taste. They have large mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth used to tear prey apart, and they have multiple plates that protect their ears from any danger, which they can move to detect sound.
Death Angels have evolved to be completely covered in rock-hard armor, which means human weapons - even bombs and fire- cannot penetrate it. We know they are capable of destroying hard metals and rock without effort, so humans stand no chance. That does not mean they are completely without weaknesses, however (and again, we'll get to that, don't you worry). Their role in Earth's ecosystem is much like a parasite infesting everything around it, leading to the downfall of the planet.
Speaking to Empire, Krasinski explained his reasoning behind the features of the Death Angels: "The idea is if they grew up on a planet that had no humans and no light then they don't need eyes, they can only hunt by sound. They also develop a way to protect themselves from everything else so that's why they're bulletproof and all these things. ... [which is] also the reason why they were able to survive kind of the explosion of their planet and then survive on these meteorites because they've evolved to be bulletproof. Until they open themselves up to be vulnerable, they're completely invulnerable."
Hunting Mechanism
Just how intelligent Death Angels are is unclear, but we do know they are vicious hunters. The aliens use echolocation to locate prey, similar to bats and dolphins. Echolocation is a method of determining the position of an object or sound source by using sound waves, which bounce off the object and allow them to find what they seek without the use of sight.
Because of this, the Death Angels themselves seem to move incredibly quietly despite their speed, possibly to avoid creating excess noise that proves harmful to their species.
The beasts display a signature screech when they move in to attack, which could lend itself to how the Death Angels communicate. In both A Quiet Place and its sequel, we see that when one of the creatures dies, another soon comes running in its place, which could mean all the monsters are connected, or they have an elaborate communication system.
We also see in the films that Death Angels can disrupt electromagnetic fields, their presence causing interference with electrical equipment, with screens breaking and lights flickering. The exact cause of this is yet to be explained, but it can be assumed it is linked to their alien origins, as we often see aliens in popular culture wreaking havoc with technological equipment on Earth.
The Lethal Encounter
Death Angels have wreaked havoc upon Earth during their short stay so far, annihilating a great portion of the population and giving way to apocalypse scenes with sparse human interaction. In A Quiet Place, we heartbreakingly see them kill the Abbotts' youngest son, Beau, when he accidentally makes noise with a toy. Their kills are quick and clean, ripping apart their prey within seconds using their claws or teeth, leaving little time for suffering or fear.
Despite being the perfect apex predator, what is strange about Death Angels is their interactions with humans disrupt the basic predator-prey instinct. Rather than pouncing, killing, and eating their prey, we only see the monsters brutally attack, and then leave the body.
We see the Abbotts ponder this in the first movie, with their whiteboard including the prominent note, "Why don't they eat their prey?". Every corpse we see in the films is either fresh or mummified, but perfectly intact, suggesting the monsters do not eat humans. It could be that the aliens kill for thrills, but the answer seems more likely due to their very sensitive hearing.
In both the first and second films, Death Angels flock when they hear a noise and locate the source, viciously killing the culprit. It could be that their bloodlust simply comes from a sense of danger caused by noise, and their killer instinct comes from the need to silence the offending sound.
So, what do the Death Angels eat? That remains to be seen, but so far, we know humans aren't on the menu. Their teeth suggest they do eat meat rather than surviving on an herbivorous diet, but it could be that their biochemistry means they cannot eat humans and they instead hunt the animals that roam the Earth.
It could also be that they can't eat anything on Earth and that their robust biology means that it could take years, maybe even decades or centuries, for them to starve to death.
Surviving the Silence
The heightened sense of the Death Angels' hearing has meant that the human race in the world of A Quiet Place has had to adapt to living in silence. We have seen some interesting ways in which humans have endured the alien invasion, particularly when Evelyn prepared for the birth of her and Lee's fourth child.
A crying baby is hardly ideal in a climate where silence is a must, so the Abbotts construct a soundproof box and source an oxygen supply to keep the youngster, and the family as a whole, hidden from any threats.
In the basement of their remote home, the couple and their children soundproofed using newspapers and a thick paste, allowing her to give birth without alerting the aliens. The family also used the cover of a nearby waterfall to talk while bathing and to avoid crunching leaves. We also see the family cleverly create sand paths to muffle the sound of their footsteps. Ultimately, the Abbotts has survived longer than most due to their fluency in ASL. This skill allows the family to easily communicate without the fear of accidentally speaking too loud and alerting Death Angels to their location.
However, the aliens aren't completely invulnerable, as we have already briefly touched upon. Their hearing, which makes them so dangerous, can also be weaponized against them, as we have discovered within the films. Their hunting cry caused them to open their armor, leaving them vulnerable to any weapon that could pierce their delicate flesh and kill them.
In A Quiet Place, we also learn that high-frequency sounds - such as feedback from hearing aids - disorient the creatures and cause the same effect. This is used by the Abbott family to safely travel in A Quiet Place 2, armed with Regan's hearing aid and an amplifier to locate any Death Angels and quickly dispose of them.
The aliens also cannot swim as their bulletproof armor is incredibly heavy, causing them to sink. In A Quiet Place 2, when Regan and Emmett are attacked, they swim away from the danger as a monster that jumps into the water after them immediately drowns. This means that it would be easy to survive the apocalypse on an island surrounded by water, which we see in the second film as Regan travels with Emmett to find a group of survivors holed up on a remote island.
Cultural Impact
A Quiet Place and its terrifying monsters were an immediate hit among both genre and wider audiences. One of the wisest decisions Krasinski made in the first film was holding as much of the origin story back about the aliens as possible, thrusting both viewers and the film's protagonists into a world of chaos and the unknown.
Another thing shielded from audiences was a full, detailed look at the Death Angels themselves, again aligning us with the characters who only got brief glimpses of the monsters before meeting their doom.
Much of the terror in the film comes less from jump scares and more from sheer dread, as well as the innocence of children growing up in an apocalyptic environment. Krasinski himself has described the first film as a "love letter to his children" (per Screen Rant), and he made the first film shortly after he and wife Emily Blunt welcomed their second child.
Speaking about how he created fear within A Quiet Place, he told The Independent: "I wanted to make sure that I got a good amount of experience in what I wanted to do and what scared me. I watched Get Out, The Witch, The Babadook, you know, everything. Instead of looking at other movies and techniques and how to steal from certain things, I wrote down when I was scared. What things really made me nervous. And so, instead of visual style, it was about when I started to get tense. I started drawing out the tension in a different way, because of how it affected me."
A Quiet Place has been praised for its representation of deafness and highlighting the importance of ASL to a wider audience through Regan and the Abbott family. The first film is silent more often than not, placing the audience into the position of a deaf person like no other film had before. It starred an actual deaf actress playing a deaf character who was central to the plot in both films so far, without a reductive narrative that othered deafness.
The first film grossed more than $350 million worldwide and was met with critical acclaim, receiving Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations while Enily Blunt won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.
Its sequel received the biggest film opening of the COVID-19 pandemic, grossing a whopping $ 297.4 million worldwide, and received generally positive reviews from critics.
Filmmaking Insights
Undoubtedly, A Quiet Place is an ambitious film, and a lot rode on creating the Death Angels as realistic and terrifying creatures. Comments made by the film's crew in the special features on A Quiet Place's home video release reveal that Krasinski took inspiration from prehistoric fish in their design, while production designer Jeffrey Beecroft and concept artist Luis Carrasco studied nautilus shells.
The original design for Death Angels was very different from what ended up on the screen, with models of the creature standing on two legs and drawing influence from the curve of a human ear to create a much larger, rounder torso. Designer Gordon Wholley told The Bell that the team also drew inspiration for the Death Angels from carnivorous plants and mummies, so they really are an amalgamation of some of nature's strangest phenomena.
Scott Farrar, the film's visual-effects supervisor, told Vanity Fair that the original monsters went through a "total redesign as they weren't scary enough." Well, mission accomplished.
Once the team had the design of the Death Angels down, it was time to bring them to life onscreen. Krasinski himself donned a motion capture suit for the basis of the monsters in some scenes, with Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) using CGI to create the final product.
Krasinski reportedly insisted to ILM that the monsters were only visible in the film for brief moments, heightening the tension and immersing the audience into the chaos onscreen where fear of the unknown is ever-present. Speaking to Empire, Krasinski said he wanted the action to feel "so fast that you either survived or you didn't. So it puts these people in a really tense place."
Critical Analysis
The Death Angels have joined the pantheon of iconic horror monsters, continuing to haunt our darkest thoughts and spine-chilling nightmares. A Quiet Place received praise for many elements, including its design of the aliens, with Empire surmising it is: "A bravura monster movie which just doesn't let up, ratcheting tension with nary a word uttered on screen. It also boasts great creature design and a breakthrough performance from young Millicent Simmonds."
Taking inspiration from bats, plants, and the way Ancient Egyptians preserved their dead, Death Angels were created with meticulous detail by Krasinski and his team, who would not rest until they created something truly terrifying - and they succeeded.
John Krasinski's lack of experience in horror worked to his advantage as he found himself chasing a feeling, rather than emulating other films. This yearning to experiment in an unfamiliar genre helped to create a truly unique cinema experience, which is still a masterclass in dread six years after its release. The lack of sound and quick flashes of the monsters includes the audience in the sheer terror the characters are faced with at the claws of the Death Angels, and coupled with their horrifying appearance, creates sheer nightmare fuel for the masses.
And that's without even mentioning the carnage we see them enact as they crush metal and bone without breaking a sweat after hearing just the briefest whispers. It's hard not to feel hopeless when faced with the power of the Death Angels, and their danger is summarised perfectly by Krasinski in his Empire interview in which he describes their coming to Earth as "wolves in a daycare center." The attention to detail in their design, evolution, and place in Earth's ecosystem, as well as their rich backstory, helps cement their realism in the world of A Quiet Place, which is sure to be explored even further in upcoming spin-off Day One.
The fact that such mysterious antagonists have become such fully-fleshed-out characters in a world packed full of rich detail shows the dedication that has gone into the franchise and continues to be built upon rather than growing thin as time passes.
The third A Quiet Place installment, A Quiet Place Day One, is in theaters June 28, this time directed by Michael Sarnoski.
