Every Known Weakness The Aliens Have In A Quiet Place

Summary

• Death Angels’ weaknesses include high-frequency sounds, inability to swim, and unprotected heads.
• High-frequency sounds temporarily disable and distract the creatures, while their heavy armor makes them vulnerable to drowning.
• The aliens’ reliance on sound for hunting makes them susceptible to silent attacks and environments with loud distractions.

Though the aliens in A Quiet Place seem nearly indestructible, several of their weaknesses have been exposed across the films. Released in June 2024, A Quiet Place: Day One marks the third film in the franchise and explores the aliens’ origins. A Quiet Place’s franchise timeline now spans over a year. While the human characters have changed with each installment, the creatures have stayed the same, allowing for further development of their motives and weaknesses. A Quiet Place: Day One’s ending allows for a sequel, which will likely further explore the creatures’ lore.

Original to the franchise and referred to as Death Angels, the monsters are bloodthirsty and extremely hard to kill. They walk on extended arms and legs and have very sharp three-pronged claws on their hands. Because of their posture and claws, they can run at incredibly high speeds and grip and climb walls, making them a more significant threat. They also have thick armor that protects them from modern firearms and weapons. Due to their physical strengths, it is easy to assume the aliens are indestructible.

Despite their physical prowess, the creatures are not impossible to destroy and are rather simple-minded beings. The aliens are driven by an instinctual need to feed and destroy without much forethought. The intentions of the Death Angels are even reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s aliens from War of the Worlds. Though it isn’t the only modern alien-creature franchise, A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place: Day One were box-office successes, cementing their Death Angels in popular culture. While the aliens are iconic as ruthless killers, they do have a few weaknesses, which are explored and exploited by the survivors throughout the series.

3 High-Frequency Sounds

The Death Angels React Poorly To High-Pitched Sounds

While their amplified hearing is their strength, allowing them to sense and track victims from far away, it also becomes their weakness, making them more sensitive to specific frequencies and leaving them more open to attack. High-pitched sounds impede the Death Angels, and if the sound is loud enough, it can cause them to be momentarily disabled from the pain. Loud noises attract the Death Angels but don’t necessarily hurt them. There is often dispute about whether the Death Angels are just sensitive to high-volume sounds, but it is the high-frequency sounds that upset them.

High-frequency sounds have been used to defeat the creatures on several occasions and have become a key plot point of the series. A character uses the tuning from cochlear implant processors to ward off the creatures in A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place II. The feedback the device emits causes the alien to slow his attack and freak out, unable to bear the pain. When the sound is amplified using a microphone, the Death Angel can’t help but expose its fleshy head in its struggle, leaving it vulnerable to further attack.

Their sensitive hearing also limits their ability to differentiate certain sounds in a loud environment, weakening their honing skills. Many simultaneous noises, such as running water or fireworks, mean that their super hearing is less useful since they can’t distinguish what is or isn’t prey. Set in busy New York City, A Quiet Place: Day One explores the alien’s hearing powers, testing how well they can judge relative sound. This is in contrast to the first two films, which are set in the more quiet suburbs, where every random sound seems to be amplified.

All the films use sudden singular loud noises as jump-scares and important plot points. Throughout the franchise, the survivors are able to use this weakness and create loud noises that distract and hinder the Death Angels. The sound of running water is the main way they have figured out how to obscure their conversations from the creatures. Even when in these loud environments, they sometimes resort to using sign language for protection. The humans often go towards running water, such as waterfalls or intense rainfall, as a distraction or to hide and defend against the blind creatures.

2 Water

The Death Angels Cannot Swim

Furthering their issues with water, the Death Angels are unable to swim. Due to their heavy armor, they also drown quickly. Likely, the world from which the aliens originated did not have water, as they don’t need it to survive and have not adapted to it. However, they are not averse to water and will not shy away from it if prey is present, much like the Death Angel that submerges itself in the flooded basement in the first film to try to find a victim. However, they cannot swim in deep or harsh bodies of water.

The humans are able to use this knowledge of the Death Angels’ weakness to their advantage. In A Quiet Place II, a small colony of survivors lives relatively normally on an island without much fear of the Death Angels reaching them. The survivors explain that the government knew the creatures couldn’t swim and tried to evacuate people to the island, though only a few actually made it. The only way the creature is eventually able to get to the island is by a human invention, as it sneaks onto a boat and drifts there undetected.

This weakness is often only exploited if the environment allows for it, by introducing an island setting or large body of water on which action can occur.

A Quiet Place: Day One also explores the Death Angels’ watery weakness. Since the military knows that the monsters cannot swim, they quickly take advantage of this deficiency to slow the spread of the alien invasion. To save the city, they blow up the bridges that lead to and from Manhattan. This effectively traps the aliens on the island and the remaining survivors, who are promised that boats will arrive to rescue them. This weakness is often only exploited if the environment allows for it, by introducing an island setting or large body of water on which action can occur.

1 The Aliens’ Anatomy

The Death Angels’ Heads Are Unprotected And They Have No Eyes

While their bodies are protected by thick armor, the heads of the Death Angels are their weakest spots. However, only if the head is exposed are they able to be killed by a human. Parts of their head open regularly to help them gauge sound and hear from further away. The plates that line the front of their faces extend and contract to hear better, and the backs of their heads can open into ear-like structures that amplify sound. However, these movements are often carefully controlled so they are not vulnerable to attack.

The design of the Death Angels is reminiscent of multiple animals, including the long arms of a gorilla and the scaley, sinewy appearance of a bat. Also like bats, the aliens cannot see well and use their acute sense of hearing to hunt.

One way the humans are able to get the creatures to expose their weakness is through the loud, high-pitched frequencies of the cochlear implants, which causes them to panic and instinctively open their armor. In the films, they are shot and stabbed in the head while their defenses are down. With their guard and armor up, access to their weakest spots is minimal, making them very difficult to defeat without a plan. Pairing this weakness with another one, like their repulsion from high-frequency sounds or a silent sneak attack, allows the humans to defend themselves against the Death Angels.

Since the aliens originate from a lightless planet and cannot see, they have to rely primarily on their heightened sense of hearing. While only hearing normally works well for them, the lack of sight can be an impediment. Because they locate their victims by sound, hunting is particularly difficult in loud environments. In multiple scenes in the films, the characters are able to sneak up on the aliens when something loud is happening. They also cannot truly detect someone if they are being quiet in a room, and some survivors have managed to escape by being still and silent.

Their size is also sometimes an impediment, as they cannot fit into smaller places, like the bunker in
A Quiet Place II
, to reach their prey.

However, this visual impairment weakness isn’t always bad, especially in dark situations when the victim cannot see either. This means they are both equally disadvantaged without sight, but the creature still has its heightened sense of hearing. Similarly, in an environment like the basement flood in A Quiet Place, the Death Angel uses his heightened hearing to disappear into the water and better track his prey by listening for them underwater without needing to see. It is only by hiding behind a broken pipe of loud, running water that the survivor is able to remain undetected.

A Quiet Place
is available to stream on Paramount+.
A Quiet Place II
is streaming on Paramount+, Hulu, and Disney+.

Though they initially seem indestructible, exploiting the Death Angels’ few weaknesses has allowed some humans to survive for over a year across the franchise. The creatures are clever but often not smart enough to catch the main characters, who often are able to escape due to a convenient coincidence. But this doesn’t mean the aliens haven’t killed thousands of people before, including some of the franchise’s heroes. Despite their few weaknesses, the highly formidable Death Angels in A Quiet Place have proved themselves worthy adversaries in any post-apocalyptic world, making them iconic and fearsome modern monsters.