Perversely sordid, some of the creepy soft-core scenes cross the lurid line of bad taste.
The Quiet (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:92
Fresh:20
Rotten:72
Average Rating:4/10
Consensus: This psychological thriller's talented cast is undercut by leaden pacing and a problematic plot.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for strong and disturbing sexual content, a scene of violence, language, drug content and brief nudity.
Runtime: 1 hr 36 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Aug 25, 2006 Limited
Box Office: $289,969
Synopsis: Jamie Babbitt (GILMORE GIRLS) makes his feature debut with this suburban melodrama tinged with the trappings of exploitation films and Gothic horror. Dot (Camilla Belle, THE CHUMSCRUBBER) is a deaf... Jamie Babbitt (GILMORE GIRLS) makes his feature debut with this suburban melodrama tinged with the trappings of exploitation films and Gothic horror. Dot (Camilla Belle, THE CHUMSCRUBBER) is a deaf and mute girl with a troubled past: her mother died when she was seven, and now her deaf father has been run over by a truck. Things get much worse for Dot, however, when she moves in with the Deer family, who make no attempt to hide their dark secrets from her. Patriarch Paul Deer (Martin Donovan) is having an incestuous relationship with his cheerleader daughter, Nina (Elisha Cuthbert, LOVE, ACTUALLY), who spends much of her time lashing out at the new addition to the family. Mother Olivia remains oblivious, shrouded in a haze of pills. Slowly, the two girls come to a tenuous understanding with one another, united in the secrets they share. The shocking conclusion is unexpectedly lurid given the quietness of the film's first half, and the two actresses carry the material beautifully. The coldly lit interior of the family home, which is undergoing renovations, ,creates an utterly creepy backdrop and sets the mood for this tone poem of suburban distress. [More]
Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Camilla Belle, Edie Falco, Martin Donovan
Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Camilla Belle, Edie Falco, Martin Donovan, Shawn Ashmore
Director: Jamie Babbitt
Director: Jamie Babbitt
Screenwriter: Abdi Nazemian, Micah Schraft
Composer: Jeff Rona
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
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Reviews for The Quiet
[Cuthbert] picked a poor film to get behind as star and producer: it mistakes luridness for tragedy and monotony for sophistication.
An uncomfortable and disturbing portrait of lives in disarray, each one being hidden by a veneer of faux-normalcy within the external world.
How can a movie structured around incest, murder, parental alcoholism, underage fornication, and overt flirting between same-sex cheerleaders be so bland, frigid and hopelessly lifeless?
The Quiet, however much it may hold you through most of the story, will leave you at the end stunned by the realization: you have just wasted 96 precious minutes of your presumably not unlimited lifespan.
The Quiet fails to realize its ambition of melding the satirical levity of a teen high-school comedy with serious, issue-oriented drama.
Rather than an indictment of depravity, the movie quickly becomes a particularly cynical example of it.
The exposition is so heavy-handed, the producers might just as well distribute a printed handout to hapless ticket buyers.
Bordering on camp and loaded with lesbian undertones, this wretched drama plays like a high-school horror flick that trades monsters and mayhem for an overdose of force-fed cruelty.
A sauced teaser that skims Freudian depths it doesn't begin to fathom.
Since it's too bad to be good, but not bad enough to be campy, you'll wish they would have just kept quiet.
An occasionally compelling, dark and sometimes darkly funny movie draws us in but doesn't really pay off. And any teenager knows what that describes -- a tease.
Director Jamie Babbit, with unnervingly beautiful compositions and sharp editing, lures you so skillfully into the film's awful revelations and sickening atmosphere, you feel rather like Dot: defenseless, alone, vulnerable.
The film's focus shouldn't be Dot (Camilla Belle), a deaf, mute and orphaned teen. It should be her new family of suburbanites sliding into hell.
Characters already too wicked to be credible start doing stuff simply too stupid to be believed, with no help from a cast way too overmatched to be useful.
A drama that all but begs to have its earnestness called into question.
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