‘A Quiet Place – Part II’: How the Sound Designers Made the Horrifying Prologue

Ethan Van Der Ryn and Erik Aadahl are back to terrify audiences with just the slightest noise

A Quiet Place Part II
Paramount

(Warning: This piece includes minor spoilers for “A Quiet Place — Part II”).

The opening shots of “A Quiet Place – Part II” do not immediately give away that we are witnessing the day the Abbott family was forced into silence by deadly creatures from another world. And that makes it all the more shocking when Lee Abbott’s truck arrives on a seemingly deserted street, the sound of its engine and the slam of its door echoing through the theater with an unnatural, ominous loudness.

It is the first of countless sounds developed by the film’s sound team, led by Ethan Van Der Ryn and Erik Aadahl, who earned acclaim with the original 2018 film for turning even the simplest of sounds – crows flying or a glass bottle breaking – into potential triggers for another heart-pounding alien attack.

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