It ’s get a creepy old house , a possessed teenage girl , a scary wench , a mad paranormal researcher , hot baby in hot pants , and a semi - religious vernal world document everything with his charming 1970s camera . Is there anything that the latest pound film The Quiet Ones has n’t let ?
I ’d have to say it ’s missing a sensory faculty of purpose . But that does n’t think it wo n’t scare you along the way , and even entertain you as well . The premiss , for example , is unadulterated playfulness . It ’s the early 1970s , and a professor of unnatural psychology at University of Oxford identify Coupland wants to prove some out - there theories about psychokinesis . So he trawls local genial institutions for people who seem like they might be certify psychic vigor , then excruciate them with drug and sleep neediness until they begin ignite things on flack with their minds .
The university has lastly bring up him out , but he ’s still got a couple of cute undergraduates who need to help with his recent experiment — a beautiful , goth young woman named Jane , who believe she ’s possessed by a powerful spirit she ’s named Evey . He also enlist the help of a local feller , Brian , to film what happens when Coupland and his scholarly person ram Jane to “ evidence ” her psychokinesis so she can get rid of it .
None of Coupland ’s hypothesis about Jane ’s power make any sense , but that ’s the point . He ’s dealing with something that may or may not be possession , but he ’s using pseudoscience to analyze it “ scientifically . ” I love a movie where the “ rational ” linear perspective is invade by hoi polloi squall about ESP , and the “ religious ” view is a hot young fellow wearing a cross and researching ancient Mesopotamian myth . Plus , all the gamey technical school equipment they utilise to analyze Jane ’s “ brainwaves ” is fantastically empty-headed , and enhances the seventies pastichey feel of this movie , which recalls both Carrie and Firestarter .
There ’s also a very clever moment of set pattern in the movie which really ratchets up the latent hostility . Jane is hold open in an observation room whose observation windowpane is essentially a jam cover by a flat solid of metallic element . Every time anybody wants to see why she ’s screaming or burning or bleed randomly , they have to lift launch the hachure on that observation hole . That one little item is perfect for activating all our fears about crazy shit fly into our eyes — as well as the even handsome fear of having to stretch out around to see WTF is going on in the elbow room through that small gap .
So we ’ve got all the windowpane dressings that answer the question of how we ’ll be frightened . Unfortunately , as I mentioned ab initio , the movie founders when it gets to the “ why ” part . What precisely is shivery about Jane and Evey ? Do they represent the vengeful spirits of young lady ruin by child contumely ? By aesculapian abuse ? By demonic ritual and evil 1970s cults ? Is this a picture show about the iniquity of insane science or the evils of mad faith ? The game leap around so much that we ’re never entirely sure what ’s theorize to be scare us .
The very chilling horror movies pick a metaphor and adhere with it . Yes , jump scare will make us jump , and The Quiet Ones has those in spades . But to be sincerely terrifying , a picture show needs to waken real - life horrors ( like aesculapian ill-usage , say ) to change by reversal those jumps into something that make your tegument crawl and your nightmare seethe with new imagery .
Barring any kind of coherent metaphor , a horror movie needs to at least flat-0ut take aback us with extreme stage of demented gore or mind - explode , multi - layered bizarreness . There need to be cultist eating cow guts or hippie Satan drunken revelry or disturbed machines that conjure fiend from beyond time or a spooky girl hang multitude from the ceiling and clamber them with her psychic superpower while cantillate to her doll .
FYI , none of that shit happens in The Quiet Ones , though I bid it had . In fact , adding insult to injury , we never even find out who the “ placid single ” are , though it ’s suggest that they are the form of hoi polloi who might give babies — or at least do something more interesting than what Jane does .
What I ’m saying is that The Quiet Ones does n’t run to earn any true panic from us . Yes it trot out a clustering of large fixings for a shivery movie , and yes it function down the list of terrorise things from real life that stalk our ghost story . But in the last , all we get is a little “ psychoplasm ” barf and some loud fuck noises , couple on with some lukewarm efforts to cue us that distaff sexuality is inherently shuddery and scientist are inherently opprobrious , emotionless creeps .
Also , a batch of shakycam . Because of track Brian is film everything .
I ’m not sure why about horror stories and ground footage moving-picture show go so well together . mayhap it ’s about capture the flavor of so many spectre stories that begin with the set phrase “ I heard that this really happened . ” And indeed , The Quiet Ones checks the “ this is free-base on actual event ” corner on its Creepypasta ingredients shopping list .
Unfortunately , a brilliant horror moving picture is all about how you put those ingredients together . The Quiet Ones has bake up a dead serviceable horror cookie . It ’s just kind of cold .
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