A Quiet Place (2018)
Trivia
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Spoilers (15)
The film's director and male lead, John Krasinski, played the creature in a motion capture suit for a few scenes.
Actress Millicent Simmonds has been deaf since infancy due to a medication overdose. This was the second film she starred in, with Wonderstruck (2017) being her first.
Emily Blunt did the bathtub scene in one take. According to John Krasinski, as soon as he said "Cut", Blunt left the character and asked the crew, "What's everyone having for lunch?"
Actor-director John Krasinski has said that the single greatest compliment he received regarding the film, was in a tweet from the master of the horror story himself, Stephen King: "A QUIET PLACE is an extraordinary piece of work. Terrific acting, but the main thing is the SILENCE, and how it makes the camera's eye open wide in a way few movies manage" (6 April 2018).
There are real family photos of John Krasinski and Emily Blunt and their children used in the film.
The opening sequence was the last to be shot, as it required John Krasinski to shave most of his beard.
The movie only contains about 25 lines of voiced dialogue, although sign language dialogue is used extensively.
It was initially intended to leave the American Sign Language un-subtitled, believing the audience would understand the subtext of what was going on. Notably, the first trailer does not subtitle the signing. However, while editing the sequence where Regan argues with her father regarding her hearing aids, it was decided by the filmmakers that the sequence would have to be subtitled. Subsequently all use of ASL throughout the movie was subtitled.
Since the characters communicate in American Sign Language to avoid making sound, filmmakers hired deaf mentor Douglas Ridloff to teach ASL to the actors and to be available to make corrections.
The device Regan wears is not a hearing aid, but a cochlear implant. This indicates that Regan has a sensorineural hearing loss, which means her inner ear has sustained some sort of damage. The cochlear implant translates vibrations in the air into nerve impulses that the brain perceives as sound.
The final look of the creature wasn't fully figured out until very late in the process during post-production.
In the opening grocery store scene, the shelves are mostly empty--except for the aisle with the potato chips. This was because nobody wanted to risk making noise that would attract the monsters.
During filming, the crew avoided making noise so diegetic background sounds (e.g., the sound of rolling dice on a game board) could be recorded; the sounds were amplified in post-production.
For the first test screenings of the film, audience members laughed in scenes with the creature present as the CGI for the creature was either not finished or completely absent, leaving John Krasinski in a motion capture suit for scenes where he played the monster. Further screenings were well-received once the CGI was done.
Bryan Woods and Scott Beck's screenplay was named one of the ten best scripts of the year on Tracking Board's 2017 Hit List, an annual list voted on by industry professionals.
In order to connect with the characters, John Krasinski edited the first two cuts of the movie without any sound. According to the director, the movie could work without any sound whatsoever.
The film's premise about the need to maintain silence was compelling enough that many audiences at screenings grew unusually quiet themselves. As such, eating and making any noise in the auditorium was frowned upon by viewers. Consequently, concession stand sales, a major income stream for movie theaters, were limited for audiences of the film.
The original script was written by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods for Paramount, and then was submitted to John Krasinski, who co-wrote it and decided to direct it. In addition to directing, Krasinski co-stars with wife Emily Blunt as the married couple.
In an interview with the website SlashFilm, screenwriters Scott Beck and Bryan Woods revealed that Paramount Pictures originally intended to incorporate A Quiet Place (2018) into the studio's Cloverfield (2008) film franchise. As Beck said in the interview, "I guess it crossed our mind and we had spoken to our representatives about that possibility. It was weird timing, though, because when we were writing the script, 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) was at Paramount. We were actually talking to an executive there about this film, and it felt from pitch form that there might be crossover, but when we finally took the final script in to Paramount, they saw it as a totally different movie." The screenwriters and director John Krasinski were ultimately relieved and grateful for Paramount to finally decide to allow them to make the film as a wholly original, stand-alone film, rather than to make it as a part of the Cloverfield film franchise, or any other film franchise for that matter. "One of our biggest fears was this [the film] getting swept up into some kind of franchise or repurposed for something like that," Woods added. "The reason I say 'biggest fear' - we love the 'Cloverfield' movies. They're excellent. It's just that as filmgoers, we crave new and original ideas, and we feel like so much of what's out there is IP. It's comic books, it's remakes, it's sequels. We show up to all of them, we enjoy those movies too, but our dream was always to drop something different into the marketplace, so we feel grateful that Paramount embraced the movie as its own thing."
In an interview with E!, John Krasinski had said, "I would love to direct Emily Blunt, [but] I'd rather act with Emily than direct. I don't know if I need that responsibility. She's so good and I'd be so scared to screw it up, but [I'd be] happy to be in scenes with her. That would be really fun. We're always up for doing something. It's just got to be the right thing...Give us a good one! I would love it!"
John Krasinski said he wrote the script with wife Emily Blunt in mind for the role, but was hesitant to ask her fearing she might either turn it down or accept it for him. Blunt mentioned in interviews that she had initially recommended a friend to Krasinski for the project. Krasinski had not hired the actress, and after reading and loving the screenplay, Blunt told her husband she wanted to be involved with the film and play the role.
Emily Blunt encouraged John Krasinski to direct the film.
John Krasinski wanted his movie creature to be extra special and so discussed its general design and animations with Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) veteran visual effects wizard Scott Farrar, who'd been responsible for some of the memorable effects in such films as Cocoon (1985), Backdraft (1991) and Transformers (2007).
Day 473 of the invasion, is October 3rd. This means that the invasion started on June 17, about two weeks before July 4th. This explains why the Abbott family has fireworks in their fields.
This film marks the first time real-life couple John Krasinski and Emily Blunt star alongside each other. They both appeared in The Muppets (2011), but did not share any scenes.
One of the taglines for the movie is "red means run." A Song by Neil Young, "Powderfinger," includes the line "Red means run, son." Neil Young's song, "Harvest Moon" is the only song in the movie.
The initial inspiration for Millicent Simmonds' deaf character came from an earlier character sketch in Scott Beck and Bryan Woods' unfinished screenplay "The Piper," which was an adaptation of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
The third feature film directed by John Krasinski.
Emily Blunt was initially unsure about starring in the film, so Amy Adams and Anne Hathaway were briefly considered for the role of Evelyn.
The family name is Abbott. An abbot in Catholicism is the leader of a monastery. Abbots in monasteries, like Mr. and Mrs. Abbott, lead self-sufficient communities which often support themselves through means such as farming, like the family in the film. Some monasteries are also silent, and so members will not wear shoes, will communicate infrequently with spoken language, and will pray together in silence like the family in the film.
While Evelyn is homeschooling her son Marcus, written on a whiteboard at the back is the first quatrain from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.
Inspiration was also drawn from bog people, cadavers that have been mummified in peat, turning the skin black and giving it a sagging, leathery look.
Production designer Jeffrey Beecroft headed the creature design, and special effects supervisor Scott Farrar created the creatures.
Leon Russom plays the Man in the Woods, another character who has to stay silent to survive. Russom was introduced in season 2 of Prison Break (2005) as a character nicknamed 'Pad Man' by the fans, since he never talked and communicated through yellow pads (although he would later have a speaking role).
Spoilers
Bryan Woods and Scott Beck's original screenplay contained only one line of voiced dialogue.
John Krasinski almost turned down this film just as he was about to start work on the series Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan (2018). When asked by the producers if he'd be interested in appearing in a horror film, John replied that he did not do horror. But when he was presented with the premise about a 'family that can't make any noise and you have to figure out why,' he jumped on board straight away.
During the scenes in Lee Abbott's basement, there are various newspaper articles on the wall, with one headline proclaiming "Meteor hits Mexico with the force of a nuke", possibly indicating how the creatures got to Earth.
Newborn twins Ezekiel and Evangelina Cavoli played unnamed Baby Abbott. Everyone on set was very nervous about putting the babies in the padded box, but the parents were supportive and the scenes were shot as quickly as possible to minimize any possible risk.
Simmonds actually made John Krasinski cry on set with a suggestion to change an important part of the script. During the climactic scene between Lee and his kids (in the truck), the original script just had him signing "I love you." However, Simmonds suggested that he should sign "I have ALWAYS loved you," which made Krasinski cry.
Evelyn began suddenly bleeding a large amount of bright red blood which was not a normal part of early labor and something had gone wrong in her delivery, such as a condition where the placenta is damaged or begins to prematurely separate from the mother's body. These conditions can cause a lot of blood loss in the woman, the baby, or both. This explains both why Evelyn lost consciousness after her delivery, and why there did not seem to be a problem with the baby crying right after delivery. The baby was born before entering the sound proofed room and was fairly quiet as he was being carried down to the room in Evelyn's arms. The duration of silence from the baby after birth would be unusual unless there was a problem with the baby, such as blood loss, which was well explained by the sudden blood loss Evelyn had in the bathtub.
As Regan visits her little brother's grave, you can see '2016 - 2020' inscribed on the headstone, which means the majority of the story takes place, circa 2021.
In the basement scene towards the end, a few frames of newspaper clippings are visible. One of the headline reads 'Multiple Landing Sites' alluding to the origin of the monster species being extraterrestrial.
Cochlear implant processors do not traditionally make any sound, rather they send electrical impulses to the implant inside the cochlea that stimulates the nerves and is perceived as sound. At the end of the movie, when Regan holds her processor to the microphone and it's amplified through the loud speakers, it shows that the processor is making a feedback sound that the creatures can hear rather than just electrical interference that they can otherwise detect. This could only be possible though the modifications that Lee made to the processor. In addition to the small amplifiers he says he added from the stereo (which only convert sound from the microphone into a digital signal), he would also have needed to add a receiver that he may have sourced from the pile of hearing aids it is seen he has, which can then convert the digital signal into an audible sound.
The family name is never spoken or mentioned throughout the film, neither are the individual characters' names. The audience can only realize the family name is Abbot and each character's name at the end title.
When Mrs Abbott is checking herself late in pregnancy, she marks her blood pressure on the calendar 20 days before due date. If the due date is the 40th week of pregnancy, this makes her at 37 weeks plus one day. The baby is already at term. Also, the fetal heart rate is clocked at 150 beats per minute which is normal.
