This article contains spoilers about A Quiet Place: Day One.
Summary
A Quiet Place: Day Onedirector Michael Sarnoski clarifies a key detail about the aliens' intense hearing abilities. A prequel to the popularA Quiet Placefranchise,Day Onetakes on the world on the first day when it went silent, but this time in one of the loudest places in the world: New York City. Upon its release,A Quiet Place: Day Onehas received mixed reviewsthus far, though many skew positive, with the movie receiving an 85% audience score.
Speaking withThe Direct, Sarnoski addresses whether aliens can hear human heartbeats. According to Sarnoski, the aliens can indeed hear human heartbeats if they are “scared enough” that their “heart is pounding enough.” The director elaborated that there is a lot of “relative sound” occurring that makes it so that a human heartbeat is not typically louder than its environment. Check out the full quote from Sarnoski below:
No, they can. There actually was a scene at one point that we were going to play with that. But, no, I think they can. I think if you’re scared enough and your heart is pounding enough, they can hear it. I think it’s just that there’s a lot of relative sound going on. The human heartbeat is audible but rarely louder than whatever is happening environmentally. So if the sound that you’re making is louder than the environment, then you’re screwed. But occasionally, you get scared enough that your heartbeat might be loud enough for that.
Some Scenes In Day One Could Be Considered Inconsistent
In this quote, Sarnoski addresses one of the most important elements to the sound inA Quiet Place: Day One: its relativity. Even more so than the previousA Quiet Placemovies,Day Onetakes great care in establishing that doom in this universe is caused less by making any noise and more so by making a noise that is significantly louder in comparison with the surrounding sounds. This means, for example, that characters are able to talk when there is intense rainfall outside or unwrap a candy bar under a fountain.
Even with this idea, the rules for sound seem somewhat inconsistent inA Quiet Place: Day One. One of the most glaring examples of the uncertainty is when the character Eric is first introduced, and he gasps for air and splashes in a pool of water. Though it could be explained away by the footsteps of street travelers, the film just showed other city dwellers caught because of a scream or falling down and banging on something, and some of their deaths were caused by events of ostensibly similar volume.
What Happened On Every Day In A Quiet Place
The complete timeline of A Quiet Place allows the audience to track the course of the series throughout severel major days.
In the wake ofA Quiet Place: Day One’s release, Sarnoski has shared his perspective on several elements that might’ve been contradictory. One such element isA Quiet Place: Day One’s strange eggs eatenby the aliens in a key scene midway through the film. While this dubious moment was not spelled out in the actual movie, Sarnoski later offered an explanation of the meaning of the scene. Whether about these eggs or the film’s noise, it seems that Sarnoski has a lot of extra lore aboutA Quiet Place: Day Onekept in his head.
A Quiet Place: Day One
Cast
A Quiet Place: Day One is a spin-off of the A Quiet Place franchise conceived by John Krasinski. The film is set at the beginning of the invasion as humanity scrambles to survive, before the events of the original film, with Lupita Nyong’O leading the cast, directed by Michael Sarnoski.
