This article contains spoilers about A Quiet Place: Day One.

A Quiet Place: Day One director Michael Sarnoski clarifies a key detail about the aliens’ crazy hearing powers. A prequel to the popular A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II, A Quiet Place: Day One takes 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 One has been receiving mixed reviews thus far, with some people questioning the merit of the prequel and if it was necessary.

Speaking with The Direct, Sarnoski addresses whether aliens can hear human heartbeats. According to Sarnoski, the aliens can indeed hear human heartbeats if they are “scared enough” such that their “heart is pounding enough.” The director explained that there is a lot of “relative sound” occurring that makes it such that a human heartbeat is not typically louder than its environment. Sarnoski further clarified that humans face challenges when “the sound you’re making is louder than the environment” but re-asserted that a heartbeat could be loud enough. 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.”

A Quiet Place: Day One’s Sound Rules Are Inconsistent

In this quote, Sarnoski addresses one of the most important elements to the sound in A Quiet Place: Day One: its relativity. Even more so than the previous A Quiet Place films, Day One takes great care in establishing that doom in the Quiet Place-verse is caused less by making any noise and more so by making a noise that is contrastingly noisy 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 of relativity, the rules for sound seem somewhat inconsistent in A Quiet Place: Day One. One of the most glaring examples of A Quiet Place: Day One‘s fumbles is when the character of 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.

In the wake of A Quiet Place: Day One‘s release, Sarnoski has made several attempts to explain away elements that were more loosely articulated. One such element is A Quiet Place: Day One‘s strange eggs eaten by the aliens in a key scene midway through the film. While this dubious moment was not spelled out in the actual film, Sarnoski later offered a convoluted explanation of the meaning of the scene. Whether about these eggs of the film’s noise, it seems that there is clearer lore about A Quiet Place: Day One in Sarnoski’s head than there is on-screen.

Source: The Direct