Aylmer to Zazzoo and Beyond: The Quiet Ones

Monday, April 28, 2014

The Quiet Ones - Review

The Quiet Ones
(2014 - April 25)
Horror
1 hr. 39 - min.

Rated: PG-13 | Intense sequences of violence and terror, some sexual content, brief backside nudity, some language, and smoking throughout. Common Sense Media says OK for 14 and up. Read more
Grade: C

Director: John Pogue
Writers: Craig Rosenberg (screenplay), Oren Moverman (screenplay), 2 more credits
Stars: Jared Harris, Sam Claflin, Olivia Cooke | See full cast and crew

A university student (Sam Claflin of "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire") and some classmates are recruited to carry out a private experiment -- to create a poltergeist. Their subject: an alluring, but dangerously disturbed young woman (Olivia Cooke of "Bates Motel"). Their quest: to explore the dark energy that her damaged psyche might manifest. As the experiment unravels along with their sanity, the rogue PHD students are soon confronted with a terrifying reality: they have triggered an unspeakable force with a power beyond all explanation.

The Quiet Ones is a sometimes annoying somewhat standard fare from England's iconic horror film studio Hammer. The studio which has been around since the 1930s made its living off of Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and John Carradine during its heyday in the 1950s through the 1970s which just happens to be the same time period The Quiet Ones is set. You might even call it a period piece, an homage, to the Hammer Horror films of the past. They were the kings of low budget and low-low budget horror films.

Christopher Lee, John Carradine, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price cast of House Of The Long Shadows

Although Hammer never got their four stars working together in one film, that feat was accomplished by MGM in the disastrous House of the Long Shadows (when it was originally released it was so poorly received that its opening in the US was canceled), they did, however, make a slew of B-list horror hits and misses that were the bread and butter of the venerable British studio. But I digress, back to The Quiet Ones, it's the latest from the revitalized Hammer horror shingle, which gave us The Woman in Black (2012) starring Daniel Radcliffe which was actually quite good (reviewed in my 2012 Picks and Pans page). The Quiet Ones has a script co-written by Oren Moverman ("The Messenger," "Rampart", "Jesus' Son") unfortunately this Hammer follow up it is not nearly as strong as it should have been.

The Quiet Ones boasts all the hallmarks of horror movies you've seen before, an ancient evil, a based on a true story premise and unseen things banging around loudly. The story is set in the 1970s and employes the 'free love' morals and pervasive smoking so common to the era. It relies too much on the loud 'jump' type shocks rather than focusing on a strong story, script or direction. I enjoy a good horror film but for me the story is weak and implausible and falls short of what it could have been.

The direction and acting are both a bit less than stellar and occasionally it uses the dreaded 'found footage' shaky handheld camera technique. Hammer has announced a sequel to The Woman in Black its release slated for a 2015 opening. Let's hope they do a little more fine-tuning on that one. As is the assesment for so many other films, The Quiet Ones is not a truly horrible horror film just that it's not a really good one either.