The Quiet Place movies are not what one would call exposition friendly films. Because characters have to stay almost entirely silent lest they be attacked and mauled to death, there aren’t exactly a lot of opportunities in the stories for people to sit down together and explain everything they know about what’s going on in the world and what’s happening on the planet. This is a relief in some ways, as too many films tend to overburden audiences with explanations, but it also means that we are now three features into the series and still know exceptionally little about the principal antagonists of the canon. It’s been revealed they are sensitive to high frequency sound and don’t function well in water, but that’s about it.
With the newly released A Quiet Place: Day One being a prequel, there was some hope that the franchise would shed some light about the big alien invasion that led to a worldwide reduction in volume… but it didn’t exactly deliver on that front. Instead, I still find myself asking seven key questions about the otherworldly creatures from the popular horror series and wondering if future installments may hold the answers.
What Are We Supposed To Call The Aliens?
This one is pretty basic, and I’m actually shocked we don’t have an answer for it yet. From xenomorphs and facehuggers in the Alien franchise to the various species in Star Wars and Star Trek, creating an identifiable name for a new race of extraterrestrial fiends is Pop Culture 101 stuff… and yet, after three movies, there is still no widely accepted name for the otherworldly monsters in the Quiet Place franchise. There is no instance in any of the three movies where characters try to identify them as a group, and nothing has specifically stuck among audience. This would be a nice thing for the series to fix in the next installment, if not just to aide fan conversation.
Do The Aliens Have A Ship In Orbit?
At this point in the Quiet Place franchise, I have zero expectations of learning about the home world of the aliens, as that would be material difficult to tackle in the kinds of stories that are being told. That being said, I do have queries about how the creatures actually got to Earth. In both A Quiet Place: Day One and the prologue in A Quiet Place Part II, we see the aliens fall to the sky like a global meteor storm, but did they fly in from a ship? Is there some kind of massive interstellar vehicle parked above the Earth’s atmosphere that they deployed from?
If The Aliens Don’t Have A Ship, How Did They Travel Through The Vacuum Of Space?
I actually hope that there is an alien ship out in orbit in the Quiet Place films, as a lack of one opens up multiple more questions. For example: how did they survive flying around in the vacuum of space? Clearly they have an adaptable biology working in their favor, as they are seemingly able to do quite well living in Earth’s atmosphere, but if we’re honing even a little close to reality (and yes, I realize this is science-fiction), it doesn’t make any sense that the monsters could fly around without any kind of protective equipment or special resources.
If The Aliens Can’t See, How Did They Find Earth?
Here is another issue that crops up if the aliens don’t have a ship: how did they find Earth and initiate a coordinated attack? Even if they can somehow survive in the vacuum of space and propel themselves through it, the standout thing we know about them is that they can’t see but have hyper-sensitive hearing. There is no sound in space, so how could they find our planet without the ability to perceive light?
How Did The Aliens End Up In Space?
For the sake of argument, let’s say that the aliens can naturally exist in space and also have special planet-hunting senses that allow them to seek out worlds without sight. But how did they get into space to begin with? The fact that they crash land like meteors suggests that they don’t have some kind of propulsion system built into their carapaces, and they don’t fly; they crawl and climb. So how did they actually leave their home world and get to Earth?
Are The Aliens Sentient?
Are the aliens in the Quiet Place franchise intelligent? That seems like kind of a weird question to ask about an antagonist three movies into a series, but it’s a question that doesn’t presently have an answer. Executing a coordinated attack on Earth suggests that the creatures do have some kind of intelligence, but they otherwise seem pretty mindless – instinctively going after any sound they hear and instantly going into attack mode. They don’t seem to communicate with one another, but we can’t take extraterrestrial telepathy off the table. We also can’t totally rule out the idea that the creatures are merely weapons of another more intelligent species that is hanging out in orbit until all of humanity is wiped out.
Why Are The Aliens Actually On Earth?
There is no questioning that the aliens in the Quiet Place movies pose an extreme, extinction-level threat to Earth… but we don’t really know why any of it is happening. Are they hunting humans as food? (Because these are PG-13 movies, we don’t actually see what the aliens are doing to the people they attack). Are they getting all life out of the way so that they can start mining for some kind of special resource the planet has? Are they empire-builders setting up a new base of operations in an intergalactic war? Not knowing the answer is arguably scarier – and this is a horror franchise, after all – but I have to admit to my own curiosity.
A Quiet Place: Day One is now playing in theaters, having just had a terrific opening weekend at the box office. It’s pretty hard to believe that this will be the last installment of the series, so stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for news about more projects from this franchise (projects that will perhaps find ways to answer one or more questions posed above). To learn about all of the other scary films that are on their way to theaters in the coming weeks and months, check out our Upcoming Horror Movies guide.