Directed by: John Pogue.
Written by: Craig Rosenberg and Oren Moverman and John Pogue based on the screenplay by Tom de Ville.
Starring: Jared Harris (Professor Joseph Coupland), Sam Claflin (Brian McNeil), Erin Richards (Krissi Dalton), Rory Fleck-Byrne (Harry Abrams), Olivia Cooke (Jane Harper).
Hammer
was, in the 1950s and 1960s, one of the best names in Horror movies. Over the
years, although it never really went away, they stopped making movies and faded
from memory a little bit. Over the last few years, they have tried for a
revival – and they`ve made some very good films like the remake of Let the
Right One In, Let Me In, and the Daniel Radcliffe starring The Woman in Black.
They want to make classical horror movies – more interested in atmosphere and
suspense, than blood and guts. These movies are tricky to pull off however –
because there is a fine line between building atmosphere and just being dull.
Their latest movie, The Quiet Ones, is on the wrong side of that line.
The
film takes place in the 1970s, where Professor Joseph Coupland (Jared Harris)
who wants to prove that the supernatural is nothing but mental illness. He
hires Brian (Sam Claflin) to be his cameraman to film the experiments he is currently
doing on Jane Harper (Olivia Cooke) – a girl who speaks to Evey, a strange
creature that only she can see, that does strange things. Along with Coupland's
two assistants (Erin Richards and Rory Fleck-Byrne) they settle into a big, old
house in the country, to try and cure Jane. The experiments are inhuman – but
at first, only Brian seems bothered by them. But as the experiments prove
ineffective – in fact, the more they do, the worse things get, and even
Coupland`s assistants start to doubt him. But Coupland will not be dissuaded,
and ramps up his experiments, making things worse. And, strangely, all the men
start to fall in love with Jane.
Generally,
I prefer my horror movies short on gore, and more on atmosphere and suspense. I
have liked all of Ti West`s recent films for example – like The House of the
Devil and The Innkeepers, which like The Quiet Ones takes place in the kind of
old buildings that exist to provide the setting of horror movies. Those films
go in different directions from The Quiet Ones (and each other) but for the
most part, they are about building suspense, and not using cheap scare tactics
on the audience. The Woman in Black, the last film by Hammer, was similarly
effective.
The
problem with The Quiet Ones is that I wasn’t scared by it; I didn’t get the
mounting suspense of the situation. Instead, I was just bored. Not much happens
in The Quiet Ones – and nothing we do not expect. They don’t make movies about
Professors who want to prove the supernatural doesn’t exist who successfully
prove their hypothesis. They do make movies about mad doctors, who are
obsessively driven beyond the point of reason, to do what they are obsessed
with. That is what The Quiet Ones is – but it takes so long to get anywhere
approaching interest, that I simply stopped caring.
The Quiet Ones has all the ingredients of being a fine horror film – but it never comes off. The setting is perfect, the outline of the story would work, and in Jared Harris, they have a fine actor to play an insane doctor. But the ingredients never come together. It takes more than a dark old house to create atmosphere. But that`s all The Quiet Ones has.
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