50 Fun Facts About A Quiet Place

In A Quiet Place, what do the Abbotts pour along their paths so they can walk silently?

Sand marks every route the barefoot family takes, so that no leaf or twig crunches underfoot; the director said the paths were among the first ideas he added when he rewrote the script.

Who plays Evelyn Abbott, the mother, in A Quiet Place?

Emily Blunt had been suggesting other actresses for the role until she read the script on a flight and told her husband, the film's director, that it had to be her.

Which sense do the alien creatures in A Quiet Place lack?

Sight: the creatures hunt purely by hearing, and the effects team was told to make them look like predators that had evolved until they no longer needed eyes.

How do the Abbotts mainly communicate without making noise in A Quiet Place?

American Sign Language even took over a key father-daughter scene first scripted as speech: the young actress signed it for the director, who found her gestures 'so much more cinematic' than words.

Which two screenwriters conceived the story of A Quiet Place while in college?

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods were watching silent comedies by Chaplin, Keaton and Tati in college and wanted to make sound itself the monster, 'the equivalent of the shark in Jaws'.

Which franchise did the writers of A Quiet Place say it might once have crossed over with?

Cloverfield crossed the writers' minds while they wrote the script, but the studio took the finished screenplay as a film of its own, and the director later said a tie-in was never raised with him.

Who plays Regan, the Abbotts' deaf daughter, in A Quiet Place?

Millicent Simmonds is deaf herself: the director refused to cast a hearing actress pretending, saying he wanted someone who lives it and could teach him about it on set.

Who plays Marcus Abbott, the elder son, in A Quiet Place?

Noah Jupe caught the director's eye in The Night Manager; he then asked George Clooney for an early look at Suburbicon so he could see more of the boy's work before casting him.

Which board game do the Abbott children play in near silence in A Quiet Place?

Monopoly: the writers said the scene of the children playing it and accidentally making a noise was one of the first images they had for the script, and it went into the first trailer.

Which toy leads to Beau's death early in A Quiet Place?

A Space Shuttle model: Lee takes out its batteries in the store, but Beau quietly pockets them, and the toy's electronic noise on the walk home brings a creature within seconds.

What does Evelyn step on as she heads to the basement in labour in A Quiet Place?

A nail sticking up from a basement stair goes into her bare foot just as labour begins; she swallows the scream, but the photo frame she drops still brings a creature into the house.

What colour do the lights around the Abbott farm turn when Evelyn flips a basement switch in A Quiet Place?

Red was the family's silent alarm, an emergency lighting system the Abbotts had rigged up because, with a baby on the way, they knew a night like this was coming.

What does Evelyn set off to distract the creature in the basement in A Quiet Place?

An egg timer: the sound editors said the scene only worked once the film showed the creature's ear reacting first and then the ticking timer, so the audience could follow what it was hearing.

In A Quiet Place, what does Marcus fall into while he and Regan are signalling to their father?

A corn silo: the producers said nothing stood on the farm but a house and a barn, so they built the silo and planted the corn around it for the scene in which the children sink into the grain.

What ultimately hurts the creatures and exposes their vulnerable flesh in A Quiet Place?

A high-pitched sound, the feedback from the hearing device Lee kept failing to fix for Regan, makes them recoil and open their armoured heads; she amplifies it through a microphone.

What does Lee tell Regan just before he sacrifices himself in A Quiet Place?

'I have always loved you' was the young actress's idea: the script had only 'I love you', and she asked for 'always' to cover the pair's earlier quarrel, a suggestion that made the director cry.

What weapon does Evelyn use to kill the creature in the final scene of A Quiet Place?

A pump shotgun, her husband's, finishes the stricken creature at close range, and the film cuts to black on Evelyn racking it again as more of them close in on the house.

Who performed the motion capture for the creatures in A Quiet Place?

John Krasinski, the film's director, co-writer and male lead, played them himself; at a test screening the unfinished effects showed him roaring in a tight suit and trainers, and the audience burst out laughing.

Which effects house created the creatures for A Quiet Place?

Industrial Light & Magic first gave the creatures rhinoceros-like horns, then redesigned them in about two months because the early version was not scary enough.

Which blockbuster director's company, Platinum Dunes, produced A Quiet Place on a $17 million budget?

Michael Bay, the Transformers director, rang the head of the studio to insist it make the film, the writers recalled; the $17 million film went on to gross about $340 million worldwide.

At which festival did A Quiet Place premiere in March 2018?

South by Southwest made it the opening-night film in Austin, and the reviews there were so strong that it held a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score until the week of its release.

The writers of A Quiet Place modelled its farmland setting on their childhood in which state?

Iowa is where the two writers grew up as childhood friends; the film itself was shot in upstate New York, where the production paid local farmers to grow its crops and bought 20 tons more.

Which composer scored A Quiet Place?

Marco Beltrami's music earned a Golden Globe nomination; the director kept a traditional score so that audiences would feel they were at the movies rather than inside an experiment in silence.

Which animal behaviour did a sound editor on A Quiet Place name as the model for the creatures' clicks?

Bat echolocation: editor Ethan Van der Ryn said the creatures were given vocal sonar signals, clicks that they send out and then hear bouncing back off the space around them.

Which Bong Joon-ho film did the writers of A Quiet Place cite as a significant influence?

The Host, Bong's 2006 monster film, also follows one family: a father and his relatives fight to rescue his daughter after a river creature snatches her, which the writers said fed into their script.

Which author tweeted that A Quiet Place was 'an extraordinary piece of work', leaving its director blown away?

Stephen King praised the acting but said the main thing was the silence, 'and how it makes the camera's eye open wide in a way few movies manage', in a tweet on the film's release day.

Which Dwayne Johnson film knocked A Quiet Place off the top of the US box office after its $50 million opening?

Rampage opened at number one a week later, but A Quiet Place, which had debuted at double its forecast, took the top spot back in its third weekend.

Which prize did the actress who plays Evelyn win for A Quiet Place?

A SAG Award for supporting actress went to her in 2019, on a night when she was also up for the lead prize for another film; she thanked her husband, who had directed her.

Where are the Abbotts walking when Beau's toy goes off in A Quiet Place?

On an old railway bridge, filmed on the Springtown Truss Bridge in New Paltz, New York: the toy starts up as the family crosses, and a creature reaches the boy before his sprinting father can.

Who plays Emmett in A Quiet Place Part II?

Cillian Murphy said Emmett, a family friend who has lost everyone, stands for a world that has finally given up, until Regan arrives and 'allows you to believe in more'.

A Quiet Place Part II opens with the Abbotts attending what event?

A Little League game is interrupted when something streaks across the sky; the flashback to the invasion's first day lets Lee, who died in the first film, appear once more.

Which song repeats on the radio as a signal in A Quiet Place Part II?

Beyond the Sea plays on a loop from one station, and Regan takes the title literally: someone must be alive on an island off the coast, so she sets out alone to find them.

Where does Emmett shelter the Abbotts in A Quiet Place Part II?

A steel foundry, filmed at an abandoned Bethlehem Steel plant in Lackawanna, is where Emmett lives alone in a soundproof bunker; he lets the family in but at first refuses to help them further.

What key weakness of the creatures is revealed in A Quiet Place Part II?

They cannot swim: one drowns at the marina, and the island's leader explains that his colony escaped offshore by boat, though only a few boats got away.

What injures Marcus's leg early in A Quiet Place Part II?

A bear trap snaps shut on his foot and his scream draws a creature; the wound then keeps him behind at the shelter while his sister sets out on her own.

Who plays the leader of the island colony in A Quiet Place Part II?

Djimon Hounsou stepped in after Brian Tyree Henry left over scheduling; his nameless island leader returns in the prequel Day One, which finally gives the character a name, Henri.

A Quiet Place Part II was mainly filmed in and around which city in western New York?

Buffalo and its neighbours hosted 47 days of filming, and the production shut the South Grand Island Bridge, a main highway link, for 13 hours to stage one sequence.

In A Quiet Place Part II, what nearly kills Marcus and the baby while they hide inside Emmett's bunker?

Running out of air: the hiding place is a sealed metal chamber whose heavy door keeps their noise in but also shuts them in, so their oxygen runs down while a creature prowls outside.

After the first A Quiet Place, its sound editors heard that cinema audiences had been afraid to do what?

Eat their popcorn: the editors said the stories thrilled them, because they meant the experiment had worked and a film could make a whole audience hold its breath.

A Quiet Place Part II finally opened in US cinemas on which holiday weekend in 2021, 14 months late?

Memorial Day weekend became its slot when F9 moved out; the film had premiered in New York in March 2020, days before cinemas closed, and its release was then postponed several times.

Which streaming service received A Quiet Place Part II just 45 days after it opened in cinemas?

Paramount+ got it after 45 days, half the 90 that cinema owners had insisted on before the pandemic; it was one of the first two films announced for the studio's shortened window.

Who wrote and directed A Quiet Place: Day One?

Michael Sarnoski got the job on the strength of Pig, his debut about a reclusive truffle hunter whose pig is stolen, after the first-choice director left despite having finished a script.

Who stars as Sam in A Quiet Place: Day One?

Lupita Nyong'o was so afraid of cats that she asked the director to change her character's pet; he refused, so she took exposure therapy for the role and later adopted a cat herself.

What is the cat called in A Quiet Place: Day One?

Frodo was played by two real cats, Nico and Schnitzel, because the director refused to use a computer-generated animal and got through the whole film without one.

Which Stranger Things actor plays Eric, the law student, in A Quiet Place: Day One?

Joseph Quinn's Eric is an English student in shock who follows Sam's cat back to her, refuses to leave her side, and in the end is the one who carries the animal out of Manhattan.

In A Quiet Place: Day One, Sam is determined to eat pizza from which Harlem restaurant before she dies?

Patsy's was her childhood treat after watching her late father play jazz nearby; when she and Eric finally reach it the building has been destroyed, so he fetches her pizza from another shop.

A Quiet Place: Day One is set in New York but was filmed in which city?

London stood in for Manhattan: the production designer built a four-block, two-storey New York street set, starting with Chinatown, and used locations such as Canary Wharf for the rest.

Which Nina Simone song does Sam play aloud in the final scene of A Quiet Place: Day One?

Feeling Good blares into the silent street when she unplugs her headphones: having sent Eric and her cat to safety, she chooses the moment a creature will find her.

Which film did the director of A Quiet Place: Day One cite as an inspiration for its look?

Children of Men came up constantly in his talks with the cinematographer, he said, because it tells a huge story from an intimate, on-the-ground viewpoint, especially in its action scenes.

What is A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, released in October 2024?

A video game: the first-person survival horror title can listen through the player's own microphone, so a cough or a curse in the real room can bring a creature running.