Spoilers for A Quiet Place.
A Quiet Place is a monster movie with a good concept. The monsters are attracted to noise, so the characters must stay silent. This allows the film to do much more than simple jump scares and build suspense over its well-crafted scenes.
Despite the fact that the film had nothing to do with the Cloverfield franchise, rumors began that it was originally conceived as a part of the franchise or was going to be picked up by the franchise at some point in production. To anyone who has seen the film and the Cloverfield films, this is not the case. While the monsters look vaguely similar, their size and abilities are very different.
Having A Quiet Place become a part of the franchise would have been a disservice to all of the films involved. Headcanon is free game, but there are extreme disconnects between the movies. Both the Cloverfield movies and A Quiet Place are ultimately about relationships instead of monsters, but the tactics by which the characters fight the monsters are completely different.
In A Quiet Place, characters are able to distribute information easily. Through light, the characters remain connected to their distant neighbors and each other. Through sign, they are able to communicate with one another. In Cloverfield, characters are forced into isolation or constantly on the run. A Quiet Place is sustainable in ways Cloverfield is not. None of the films’ approaches are inherently wrong; they’re simply about different things.
Moreover, if A Quiet Place was a part of Cloverfield, the series would be over. They have discovered the monsters’ weakness. This goes directly against Cloverfield. Clover and the other monsters are constantly in conflict with humans by merit of being large, scary, and hard to kill. There is no co-existing. There is only annihilating the monsters or dying. A Quiet Place allows for careful co-existing until a solution is found. And, at the end of the film, the movie and the horror is over. In Cloverfield, the end of the movie leads to more horror.
With some changes to the story and reshoots, sure, A Quiet Place could have been the next installment to the franchise, but making every good monster movie into a Cloverfield film is the wrong move. As much as I love the franchise, solo monster movies are also important. Monsters reflect societal fears, and, in a time of social chaos, their place on the big screen is fitting. Making monster movies a monolithic franchise goes directly against what makes them important and frightening.
