While some movies struggle at the box office, the horror genre's renaissance has proven just how profitable it continues to be. Some of the best horror movies returned with new sequels, while new franchises were also born. Prior to its release, A Quiet Place: Day One was one of the most highly anticipated upcoming horror movies, and the prequel is doing well in theaters. The movie's director Michael Sarnoski joked with CinemaBlend about the "terrible" sound affects he made for Lupita Nyong’o the cast.
A Quiet Place: Day One brought something new to the burgeoning franchise, thanks to its time setting and New York City setting. Reviews for Day One have offered some criticism, although its audience and critic score on Rotten Tomatoes is overall positive. As you can see in the video above, I had the chance to speak with Sarnoski and the cast ahead of the movie's release, where he opened up about making noises for the Quiet Place aliens to help performers on set. As he put it:
Sometimes when you’re doing a quiet scene it is very quiet and you really need the actors to be in that. And then sometimes there’s so many things going on that they’re just pretending that it’s very quiet and they just are very good at acting. But one of the things was, oftentimes I would have a microphone and would be making creature sounds for them to react to so they could hear a screech or hear clicking and know what they’re experiencing. And they were terrible sound affects but the actors found it useful.
I don't know about you, but now I want to saw footage from A Quiet Place: Day One, so I can hear Michael Sarnoski's attempts at the alien's clicks and other noises. It would no doubt be quite funny, especially in juxtaposition to the actors' scared faces and just how tense the theatrical cut ended up being.
The first two A Quiet Place movies (which can be streamed with a Paramount+ subscription) were helmed by John Krasinski. Sarnoski had some big shoes to fill, so it makes sense that he might go above and beyond to help get the best performances out of his cast. It turns out that Lupita Nyong'o loved his alien sounds, which resulted in the filmmaker having to do more of them. As he told me in our same interview:
I remember Lupita really liked it. And then on one scene Alex Wolff, she suggested to him ‘Oh you should make Michael do the sounds.’ And he’s like ‘No that’ll be so distracting.’ And then he was like ‘Ok I’ll try it one time.’ And I did it and it was like ‘Yeah we gotta do the sounds every time, that was great.’ So they were terrible sounds but they seemed to work.’
While some fans still have questions about A Quiet Place's aliens after seeing all the chaos on Day One, the prequel offered some more context about how the world ended prior to the events of John Kranski's first movie. And it should be fascinating to see how the world of the horror franchise continues to expand moving forward.
A Quiet Place: Day One's ending offered more connections to the main franchise, specifically related to Djimon Hounsou's character. While we met him as an unnamed leader of an island community in Quiet Place 2, we learned his name and backstory in Day One. And as such, fans are wondering if Joseph Quinn's Eric and everyone's favorite feline Frodo were actually on that island when the events of the sequel played out. We'll just have to wait and see what comes next.
A Quiet Place: Day One is in theaters now. Check out the 2025 movie release dates to plan your trips to the theater next year.
