'Quiet Place 2' trailer: 5 theories and questions we have after watching it

Two years after John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place blew up the box office, another round of tip-toeing near monsters will rouse up new thrills in A Quiet Place Part II. But after that New Year’s Day trailer that revealed new characters and an expansion of the in-world mythology, we have a few questions.

On March 20, 2020, A Quiet Place Part II hits theaters. Set immediately after the events of the first film (and also before it), the Abbots (Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe) venture to the outside world to continue their survival in a future overrun by monsters with super hearing. But as the Abbots quickly learn, it isn’t always the monsters they should fear — it’s other people.

Cillian Murphy and Djimon Honsou join the cast, playing fellow survivors whom the Abbots may or may not trust to survive. In addition to continuing the story of the Abbots’ survival, the trailer confirms that the film will also explore the family’s experience on “Day 1” when the monsters arrived from yet-to-be-revealed circumstances.

Although the trailer succeeds at being totally creepy and intense (holy shit, that bus scene), it doesn’t answer everything we want to know. Here are five questions and theories we have about A Quiet Place Part II.

1. So, what happened on Day 1?

The most exciting thing about A Quiet Place Part II is also the most important: We may finally learn where the monsters came from. But it’s important to note that the trailer shows Day 1 from the point of view of the Abbots, meaning we’re still unlikely to learn everything about the monsters, their origins, and how they were unleashed.

Are they aliens? Are they science experiments? Demons? Every possibility is more compelling, and more terrifying, than the last.

2. How did the rest of the world survive?

In the original film, pieces of clipped newspaper articles reporting on how to survive litter the Abbot basement, implying that humans were able to figure out the monsters’ methods fast enough to spread it en masse. (Gotta imagine loud-ass newspaper printers were an issue, though.)

But how did the rest of the world survive? It’s probably easier in rural areas (where the Abbots are from), with less population density and sound hazards like neglected infrastructure. But what about major cities, like New York, Shanghai, London, and Mumbai? Were cities easier for the monsters to run rampant, or were military forces able to crush them in greater numbers before their loud sounds became a problem?

Again, while it’s unlikely that Part II will detail everything about Day 1, it’s still in-universe questions worth pondering as these characters struggle to stay quiet in more cornfields and abandoned warehouses.

3. Who are these other survivors?

The Abbots will meet new characters in Part II, including Cillian Murphy and Djimon Honsou’s unidentified characters. Their goals, origins, and character are unknown to us as of now, but it’s their presence alone that’s still worth talking about. Just how did they survive? What, if any, have they figured out about surviving that the Abbots don’t already know? And why are they willing to take them in knowing this mom and her kids are a severe sound liability.

In other words: Who in their right mind would take in a damn baby in this apocalypse?

4. What is Marcus hearing?

Towards the end of the trailer, Noah Jupe’s Marcus hears radio signals while wearing big, vintage headphones. Although the audio is intentionally garbled, it vaguely sounds militaristic, implying there still exists some military authority in this apocalypse. But is that actually the case, or is Marcus hearing something else? And, once again: Can whatever it is be trusted?

5. Are the monsters evolving?

Maybe it’s just trick editing — it is a movie trailer, after all — but the trailer seems to hint there’s some kind of evolution with the monsters. A cut between two images, one involving a kid standing behind hanging sheets and the other a shot of Cillian Murphy looking mighty afraid, creates a specific kind of tension you only find in horror movies like A Quiet Place.

We can see that the “kid” behind the sheet is, well, a kid. But Murphy’s acting suggests that it might not be a “kid” at all. Are the monsters gaining a new ability? Are they possessing people? Are they becoming people? This is all very tinfoil hat, but this is the kind of speculation you get when you have such mysterious trailers.

We’ll just have to wait for March to find out.

A Quiet Place Part II hits theaters on March 20, 2020.