Review of The Quiet Ones (2014) by Thatsterlinkid — 24 Apr 2014

When you and your buddies can't decide what movie you want to see and you leave it up to a coin toss, things don't always go well. The gesture was done to help us decide between The Quiet Ones and Brick Mansions, two films that already weren't doing well with reviews but still caught our interest and released on the same day. Obviously The Quiet Ones won, but ever since the opening credits started rolling, I regretted not hopping on the Paul Walker memorial wagon. Stupid coin...

On a somewhat good note, if you weren't expecting anything that separates this from the slew of other movies like it, you may actually be surprised. Unlike the vast majority of movies that are focused on a spiritual demonic presence or possession, The Quiet Ones doesn't dwell on the act of an exorcism to rid the demon(s). Instead, we get a decent story about a group who doesn't even believe in the paranormal, and tries tying those events to mental illnesses that can be fixed through therapy. It was also kind of cool how the film switched back and forth between found footage and cinematic cameras.

Unfortunately, the movies plot was enough to make me drowsy and eliminated just about every positive thing that I could say about it. In terms of how this film implements its scares, I hope your eardrums aren't too sensitive. I've sat through a lot of horror movies that get out some good jump scares from loud noises, but this one definitely takes the prize for being the most obnoxious. Trying to hear in on a a nice conversation between characters? Sike! You won't even be able to hear them finish their sentence, because this movie thinks it's a good idea to cut off dialogue to scare the audience. I mean, it worked a couple times for me, sadly, but still. The worst part is, you don't even see anything that can be connected to that loud noise most of the time. Absolutely nothing can happen, and you get a scare snare... That's what I call them by the way, scare snares.

By the time the film was over, I had my forehead in the palm of my hand and released a couple sighs of disappointment in response to how things ended. Not only did I think it was incredibly ironic for a movie called "The Quiet Ones" to be one of the loudest movies I ever watched, but the way things built up to the end was pretty stale, and the way they came together in the end was far from original in an extremely annoying way... There was also an Olivia Cooke nipple, which was really weird to see in a PG-13 movie, but whatever. Bonus point.

Rating: 2.