What are heavy metal beetle demons — and how'd they almost end up in A Quiet Place?
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00:00What are Heavy Metal Beetle Demons?
00:03And how'd they almost end up in a quiet place?
00:05A quiet place may be all about the horrors of sound, but aesthetics matter too.
00:10Certainly the frightening beasts that drove humankind close to extinction have a lot more
00:13going for them than their sensitive hearing.
00:15These monsters are physically formidable, hunched over and crawling on all fours in
00:19a deeply off-putting way.
00:20They are covered in black, inky chitin, packed with inhuman ridges and dips.
00:25That's all before you get to their faces, which are about as gross as horror monsters
00:28get.
00:29They're kind of stole from a bunch of real life creatures, a lot of prehistoric fish
00:33and stuff like that that just look so crazy they don't look like they could be from
00:36this planet.
00:37These monsters are both fascinating and terrifying to watch on screen, boasting a design that
00:41mostly draws comparisons to Alien, without appearing too derivative.
00:46And yet, they aren't always supposed to look like that.
00:48In an interview with Collider, director, writer and actor John Krasinski explained that the
00:52design of his monsters actually changed pretty deep into the film's production.
00:56He said,
00:57I had designed this character and this creature, and we loved it.
01:01And then I was really deep in the post-production, and it was one of those moments where you
01:05could just see that he wasn't going to work as well as a different design.
01:08It's always interesting when important visual changes occur so late in a film's development,
01:13and while Krasinski didn't quite explain exactly what wasn't working, the original
01:17design clearly looks a lot different from the final product.
01:20For example, these creatures are much taller than the hunched over beasts we get in the
01:23finished film, while the original monsters also had giant devilish horns, which do, admittedly,
01:29look pretty metal.
01:30It's possible that the size and style of these beetle-like monsters proved too complicated
01:34to fit into Krasinski's, at times, claustrophobic film.
01:38Or maybe the giant horns didn't really fit with the movie's more stripped down style.
01:42Whatever the case may be, they didn't make the cut.
01:45Krasinski and his crew nevertheless served up a heaping helping of spooky monsters to
01:48terrorize the family at the heart of a quiet place.
01:51And it's a good thing, too, because movie monsters play a huge role in setting the tone
01:55and aesthetic of horror films.
01:57A Nightmare on Elm Street would feel like a different movie if Freddy Krueger didn't
02:00look like Freddy Krueger.
02:02Creatures such as Xenomorphs from Alien or the Alien in John Carpenter's The Thing lend
02:07huge amounts of atmosphere to their respective films.
02:09The oily black angles of the Xenomorphs' design mirror the industrial hallways of the
02:13film's spaceship, while the monster in The Thing provides a shocking juxtaposition to
02:17the movie's arctic setting.
02:19All of that begs the question, how did the design of the quiet place monsters alter the
02:23aesthetics of this movie?
02:25The creatures in A Quiet Place didn't quite break the mold, but their giant ears and bug-like
02:28features drive home the concept of the movie, which is entirely based around sound.
02:33The fun thing about watching A Quiet Place is that, in every scene, it feels like there's
02:37a killer hiding in the house.
02:39Every noise has consequences, and the look of these monsters really drives that home.
02:44On the other hand, Krasinski's original design looks like the kind of hellbeast you might
02:48see in a heavy metal music video.
02:50The much taller, more rigid monsters resemble demons straight out of a Baldur's Gate knockoff,
02:54not in a bad way, just in a different way.
02:57A movie that leans more heavily on 80s tropes or devilish plotlines could do a lot with
03:01tall-horned monsters.
03:03On the other hand, a film could use a monster like that to inject a little bit of fantasy
03:07horror energy into its aesthetic.
03:09And that's not to say these monsters wouldn't have worked in A Quiet Place, they just would
03:12have made it much, much different.
03:15Indeed, there's a lot that goes into making a horror film, but the monsters truly make
03:19the movie.