The Quiet

You still marvel at the visuals -- cinematographer M. David Mullen has done miracles with what must have been a microscopic budget -- but you're less invested in the tale. Which is a pity, because it might have been a perfect little potboiler. As it stands, it's merely pretty darned good of its type.

Perhaps future generations of film scholars will embrace The Quiet as a B-movie that problematizes the oppressive gaze, but for now, it's a misfire.

Trapped between edgy art flick and exploitation psychothriller, The Quiet manages to be neither, and manages to be pretty awful in the bargain.

The Quiet is best for cheap laughs by jaded moviegoers with absolutely nothing better to do with their time.

A Lifetime movie on crack, The Quiet dredges up every lurid cliche from the well of teen hormonal havoc in a tale of dysfunctional family meltdown that seems unsure whether to push for suburban-Gothic psychosexual excess or tongue-in-cheek malevolence.

The script drowns out its ideas with arch melodramatic devices and ridiculous twists while Babbitt smothers even the daylight scenes in an oppressive gloom.

With its pathetic characters, questionable logic, and wall-to-wall Beethoven, the movie is a serious contender for this year's Golden Turkey award.

Une ambiance particulière, adroitement distillée qui exploite habilement l'incommunicabilité et le regard des autres... Une réalisation agréable et un scénario de bonne facture dramatique même si la fin est un tantinet exagérée... et sort un peu de nulle part. Deux belles actrices en tout cas, surtout Camilla Belle (sic !) qui tire fort bien son épingle du jeu tandis qu'Elisa Cuthbert n'est pas totalement dans le coup, sans doute parce qu'elle est ici assez éloignée de ses rôles de bonnasse blonde habituelle. La voix off de Camilla sort par ailleurs un peu trop de banailités du psycho-comptoir mais le film n'en demeure pas moins charmant et délicatement envoûtant.

Announced as a thriller, treated like a thriller, it tries to be a thriller but it's as problematic as it's melodramatic that any trace of real tension vanishes with astonishing ease.