John Krasinski's suspense horror film A Quiet Place creates a world in which sound becomes the enemy. First for the humans who want to stay alive, and then for the monsters who also want to survive. A Quiet Place was John Krasinski’s labor of love, as he pulled triple duties as the movie's director, one of its stars, and a co-writer on the screenplay of one of the best horror movies of all time. His hard work and devotion to the film gave it a memorable film ending, one of the beset in 2018. A Quiet Place also became an unexpected huge box office success.
A Quiet Place made sure to leave many things ambiguous and open ended, and up to the viewers to discover. The monsters in A Quiet Place are just as vital characters as the Abbott family, but the film and John Krasinski chose not to give much explanation about their origins, history, and their purpose, at least not verbally. Krasinski instead allowed viewers to use visual and non-verbal clues to begin to form their own interpretations and to fill in the blanks about these otherworldly figures. The crew behind A Quiet Place took a similar approach when giving the movie its ending. As this post talks about A Quiet Place plot points, expect spoilers.
What Happened At The End Of A Quiet Place?
The conclusion of A Quiet Place kicks off with Evelyn (Emily Blunt) going into labor earlier than expected. Meanwhile, the rest of the Abbott family is away. Lee (John Krasinski) and Marcus (Noah Jupe) are off catching fish, and Regan (Millicent Simmonds) went to visit her brother Beau (Cade Woodward)'s grave. While struggling to make it down to the basement, Evelyn steps on a nail that sticks out of one of the stairs. The impact and shock of the incident causes an muffled scream, which triggers one of A Quiet Place’s monsters. Because Evelyn’s scream was short, the monster finds her general location, but not her specific placement in the room and farmhouse.
Evelyn also manages to turn on the red lights outside of the Abbott's farm, which lets Lee and Marcus know that a monster has arrived. Lee coaches a scared Marcus into running to light some fireworks to signal the monster away from Evelyn. Marcus takes off, while Lee heads inside. Evelyn makes it to the bathroom tub, leaving a lot of blood, but Marcus's lighting of the fireworks helps her just in time. She lets out a scream (due to the pain of labor), but not before Marcus' loud fireworks distract the monster.
Not knowing that his plan has worked, Lee walks in the bathroom to find a lot of blood. He assumes that the monster has killed Evelyn, and he starts to mourn his wife. Then she lets him know that she went to the shower to hide with their new child. Meanwhile, the monster is in the cornfield with Marcus. He runs to escape but hits his head on a tractor. Due to Marcus's fireworks show, Regan also sees it and heads home.
The two children eventually find each other in the cornfield. However, the monster almost kills Regan, but the hearing aid that Lee created for her continues to malfunction. It sends off feedback that hurts Regan and causes harm to the monster, but Regan is unaware of its effects on the monster because she isn't facing it when it nearly attacks her.
The rest of the final minutes of A Quiet Place involves each member of the family having their own close calls with the monster. The monster once again gets close to Evelyn and the new baby, but she escapes, and the monster tries to kill Regan and Marcus, but Lee screams to sacrifice himself. He tells his children that he loves them right before he dies, which they witness in person and Evelyn sees through the security cameras.
Regan, Marcus, Evelyn, and the new baby all make it to the control room. They begin to mourn Lee but the baby's cries alert the Quiet Place’s monster to their whereabouts. Regan's hearing aid starts to malfunction again and the monster recoils because of it. Regan also gets to see her father's control room for the first time, and she begins to put some of his clues together. She realizes that the high frequency of her failing hearing aid is what causes the monster harm.
She pulls off the hearing aid and puts it through her father's microphone. This causes the monster pain and confusion, so he loses his defenses. All the monster's armor folds back, making him vulnerable to an attack. Evelyn then shoots it with the shotgun right through its vulnerable, armor-less membrane. The family hears an alert about more monsters coming, but Evelyn smiles at her daughter because they now have the secret weapon to kill these things.
What Does A Quiet Place’s Ending Mean?
The conclusion of A Quiet Place allows the family (and viewers) to discover that sound has been the monsters’ weakness all along. However, it was only high frequency sound that caused them to become disoriented enough to lower their defenses. This reveal allows the Abbotts to discover that something they once thought of as a weakness was actually a strength, and their greatest weapon.
The Abbotts would never have discovered that high frequency noises cause the monsters harm if it wasn't for Regan needing a hearing aid. All through A Quiet Place, Regan and her family saw her inability to hear her surroundings as something that made this world too dangerous for her, but it ended up saving the rest of them in the end. Lee also believed that his inability to create a functioning hearing aid was a failure or problem, but the devices defectiveness is what keeps them alive.
There are more instances in A Quiet Place where something the family saw as a problem becomes a solution, such as with Marcus lighting the fireworks, which Lee calls rockets, to save Evelyn. In the beginning, Beau dies because he plays with a loud, bright toy rocket. Rockets literally lead to the death of Beau, but it also saves Evelyn and the new child. In many ways, Evelyn giving birth to a noisy baby is a big problem in this world where sound is the enemy. However, it is through Evelyn and Lee's undying love and need to protect their children that they find the strength to make decisions and sacrifices that keep them safe.
The ending doesn't show Evelyn, Marcus, the baby, and Regan defeating all the new monsters heading their way, but Evelyn's smile and getting her shot gun ready implies that they're ready to fight these things, and that they will most likely win the battle, if not the war.
What Is The Quiet Place Monster?
John Krasinski eventually offers answers to fans about the monster, but he left viewers to their own devices when A Quiet Place first came out. The film takes place over 400 days after the monsters have arrived. This lets viewers know that A Quiet Place’s monsters are a new thing to this world, and they weren't always a part of it.
One of the opening scenes of A Quiet Place shows Lee's control room with his notes and news clippings. These offer many details about the monsters. One clipping shows that the monsters destroyed the military: there was apparently a battle between the US military and the monsters, which the US government lost. A Quiet Place’s monsters have also been traveling all over the world.
The best way to avoid attracting the creatures is to hide underground, as another newspaper warns. In the farm area that the Abbotts live, there have been at least three monsters spotted. Another one of Lee's notes lets viewers know that the monsters don't eat the people that they kill. The newspapers also reveal that the monsters may have arrived through meteor landings in New Mexico. All these details seem to confirm that the monsters are extraterrestrial creatures.
John Krasinski later confirmed the origin and his vision for the monster's backstory when he spoke with Empire magazine on their podcast. He said:
“The idea behind all that is they’re definitely aliens and they’re an evolutionary perfect machine. So 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. I had to make it make sense.”
The creature being a product of evolution explains their armor shell bodies, sharp claws, and rapid speed. Whatever planet the monsters are from, they did most of their hunting with hearing and haven't needed eyes to survive. The fact that the monsters only hear could also explain their motives for killing humans. In one of Lee’s notes, he mentions that they didn’t eat humans, and we never see them actually consume the people they kill. Unless, they just enjoy killing people, we can assume that their motivation for killing people might be more from them having a survivalist mentality. We know that noise can hurt them, so maybe earth and humans are too noisy for them to live around peacefully. In order for the planet to be more suitable for their inhabiting, they must eliminate sound, which makes humans an annoyance and problem for A Quiet Place’s monsters.
What Does The Ending And Monsters Mean For A Quiet Place 2?
Now that the monsters’ weakness has been exposed, we'll have to see what that means for their survival. John Krasinski mentioned their armor body and super hearing are results of their evolutionary process when it came to hunting and surviving. Now that their weaknesses have been exposed, will new forms of these monsters evolve that can protect themselves from high frequencies?
We also don't know exactly how many exist on earth. We only know that a few were around the Abbott's farm, but we should assume that it took more than three to wipe out a large portion of earth's population, right?
Appropriately, John Krasinski and the Quiet Place 2 team have remained silent about the upcoming plot. However, the team behind the original released a teaser for A Quiet Place 2 with showings of Black Christmas. From the reports, the teaser seems to suggest the film only takes place a short time after the original film. We also meet a few new characters, played by Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou, who will interact with the Abbott family. This should settle anyone's lingering doubt about the family's survival at the end of A Quiet Place, but it definitely raises a lot more questions. For example, will there be bigger threats in A Quiet Place 2? Maybe the alien creatures won't be the only bad guys in the film, but more human forms of evil will start to take focus in the sequel.
Either way, we can't wait to see the expansion of A Quiet Place’s world, especially in relation to the Abbott family and the monsters.
