WARNING: There are HUGE SPOILERS ahead for A Quiet Place. So if you haven’t seen John Krasinski’s taut and increasingly compelling horror film then please do just that before returning to read the below.
The ending to “A Quiet Place” is so rousing that it will immediately make you want to stand up on your feet and yell out in delight.
Let’s go through it again just so we are all on the same page. This is the last warning for SPOILERS, because they are about to come thick and fast in the paragraph below.
Are they gone? Good.
So, after the death of John Krasinksi’s Lee, who sacrifices himself to the blind but preposterously well hearing monsters to save his son Marcus (Noah Jupe) and daughter Regan (Millicent Simmons), the pair are trapped in a basement with their mother Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and their recently born brother as a monster closes in on them.
It’s at this point, though, that Regan finally sees the notes her father had been gathering about the monsters. This makes Regan realize that she can make her hearing implant give out a noise that only the monsters can hear. This frequency exposes a weakness that allows the monsters to finally be defeated for the first time since they arrived on Earth.
After Regan makes the noise with her hearing aid, Evelyn kills one of them in the basement with a shotgun. The film concludes with the pair looking at surveillance monitors of two more monsters scampering to the house, Regan and Evelyn looking at each other, Regan nodding, and then Evelyn cocking her shotgun as they prepare for battle.
It’s very, very, very cool.
I recently had the chance to speak to Millicent Simmons, who plays Regan in “A Quiet Place,” during which time I asked her about the ending to the film, which she insisted was actually rather hard to shoot. So much so that she started to get a little scared while doing so.
“The ending was very difficult. We filmed in the basement. It was very hot. We were down there for hours. Every day. We had four or five days in a row. It was grueling.”
“Actually when we were shooting I did start to get very scared. Because you could feel the tension. And Emily is holding a real rifle. I had to back away from her. In the back of my mind I was just hoping that she kept it pointed the right way.”
But Millie insisted it was well worth it, as she called the conclusion “beyond amazing and so cool.”
“They say these things. And I knew the scenes that were coming. But it manages to incorporate everything. Drama. Horror. Romance. And then when I watched it I completely forgot all of the scenes and where it was going to go.Even though I knew all of the story.”
“And also because I hadn’t seen all of the scenes being shot. All of a sudden I could understand their characters’ point of view. I hadn’t seen that. It was a revelation to me.”
“A Quiet Place” is now in cinemas. And here’s another clip to remind you of its majesty.
