At some point, we’re gonna get sick of demons; I just know it. Yeah, yeah, wreaking havoc, possessing the innocent, tormenting the living, I get it. Will you give it a rest already? I could really go for some quiet, some Quiet Ones, in fact.
The title refers to a small group of Oxford paranormal researchers in the early 70s. They’re all hush-hush about their experiment, see? Professor Joseph Coupland (Jared Harris. Hah! Take that Stellan Skarsgård; you can’t have every last role calling for an anxious erudite grandpa.) is a bit miffed that the university has taken away their funding. “Aw, c’mon, all we did was lock a girl in a room, blast Slade 24/7 and perform harmful experiments on her! We’re really close to almost kinda learning something, sort of. All we need is another two years …” He takes the affront in stride, however, and happily moves his personal Scooby gang to a creepy mansion in the English countryside. England is replete with these things; I’m pretty sure half are abandoned on the off-chance that somebody doesn’t want to live in London. HA! Good luck with that.
The subject is Jane Harper. Olivia Cooke does a fairly good job of making us believe she’s possessed. The key is acting like a goth chick 80% of the time –just sit in a corner contemplating depression. Oh, and she has fantastic hair for somebody who spends half her life in a straitjacket. I mean, who brushes it? We see her take a bath, so I suppose she has a right to look clean, but she’s basically kept behind a locked 
door even when she hasn’t drifted off the sanity reservation.
There’s a dreadful amount of tantalizing in this film – the Prof is having sex with his student floozy (Erin Richards), as is another student (Rory Fleck-Byrne). Meanwhile, both the Prof and pretty boy cameraman Brian (Sam Clafin, who -after Katniss- is now quite used to working with violent unstable brunettes) are falling in love with Jane – which is both sick and sad. None of the intimacy is shown on film, only hinted at. Mildly stable Prof Plum here first insists that there’s a reasonable explanation for why Jane can set fire to things with her mind, then he insists that whatever possesses her can be isolated and excised, then he insists Brian is a bad influence on Jane which is left up to his scientific resolution: “GET OUT!”
In short, there is no consistency to this film. It’s impossible to know what the players want to do, nor what the demon wants to do, assuming there actually is a demon possessing Jane. As audience members, we just sort of a sit around waiting for somebody to die. The Quiet Ones sure didn’t live down to its name. This film constantly substituted shocking loud noises in lieu of actual horror. In fact, without the audio boost, there was maybe one good scare in the film. Maybe. This, however, is not nearly scary enough to justify us having to endure 1970s England for 98 minutes.
See Jane sit.
Sit. Sit. Sit.
See Jane stare.
Stare. Stare. Stare.
See Jane rage.
Rage. Rage. Rage.
See audience leave.
Leave. Leave. Leave.
Rated PG-13, 98 Minutes
D: John Pogue
W: Craig Rosenberg and Oren Moverman and John Pogue
Genre: Based on “actual” “events”
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Person …? Demonic teenager, I think.
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Anybody who lived through it
