Emily Blunt, Krasinski's co-star and real-life wife, likened the aliens to Jaws in the way that Krasinski purposefully kept them off screen for much of the film. "You don’t want to see too much at the beginning, but then ultimately, you’ve got to see the shark at some point," she laughed. "I think the creatures are interesting, because there’s something a little bit human about them, and I find that so much more disconcerting than a big, growling werewolf or something. There’s something awkward about them, and they’re so weird looking. And I think the sound design’s kind of extraordinary. It sort of tapped into the morse code that [Krasinski's character] is doing at the beginning, the idea of frequencies."
Krasinski credited the look of the creatures to the special effects wizards at ILM, who helped him craft an otherworldly threat in a truly insane timeframe; the film was shot over a mere thirty days, and the post-production window, from the end of shooting until the day of release, was only five months."There was a guy named Scott Farrar, who was one of the original ILM guys. And to have a guy like that on set telling you how they shot the Imperial ships in Star Wars at the opening, and then saying, 'you know, that raptor scene in Jurassic Park...' And you’re like, 'wait, what? You’re talking about my childhood, my movie DNA.' And he was there and he was the guy," Krasinski recalled with a laugh. "So I literally said to him, 'I have ideas, I know what I wanna do, I have this backstory for them, they’re highly evolved, they’ve become this perfect killing machine because they can hear.' And he said, 'I love it.' And I said, 'but I need you to walk with me.' And he said, 'well, listen, some directors don’t want any input, they just want us to do what they want to do, and some directors wanna collaborate.' And I was like, 'full collaboration.'"
Krasinski says that throughout the process, "it became as much their creature as my creature. So in this final three weeks of terror, they’re pulling out all the stops, they’re giving it the extra mile, they’re working weekends, around the clock, to make this guy -- we say guy because they called him 'Happy' on set; his name was 'Happy,' which I loved. But when you’re designing it, it really felt like we were all in it together. And it was really one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had. And now, knowing how the process works, the next time around, I know who to call."A Quiet Place is in theaters now, and already scored the second-biggest domestic opening of the year, behind only Black Panther. For more on the film, read our full review, and check out how Krasinski approached the movie's unique sound design.
