The Quiet | Review

Psychological drama gets into the spirit of family deconstruction.

Soaked in the dark socially-ill world where sign language is only useful for how good it will look on a resume instead of its practicality for communicating with someone with a disability, Jamie Babbit’s newest feeds off many social ills – especially the ones that need psychiatric care in the long term range. With a direct-to-video B-film quality, those familiar with the Poison Ivy series might find common storyline thread about girls getting with dirty old men, or dirty girls acting out revenge with a cheerleader’s uniform on the top drawer – The Quiet is reduced to teen-exploitation quality that lifts from the American Beauty fantasy without cultivating it into the more deserved nightmare.

Merging the cruel teenage and adult worlds, Elisha Cuthbert plays the blond-haired, skirt-kept-high, daddy’s girl as Camilla Belle portrays the newest, mostly unwanted new adopted kid with a hearing that is defunct. While one plays the victim as a victimizer, the other plays the victim one step closer to self-fulfillment. Abdi Nazemian and writing partner Micah Schraft draft a lackluster school-ground/home turf appointment where comparisons of a deaf girl to Beethoven’s aural deposition and the overwrought pill-popping mother makes for cliché characters in story full of equally cliché “film situations”. Surely the horrible step sister and evil school spirit could have be played down and the ante been placed on more sinister matter – the revenge flick is best played out when the attention is given to the blue print and not sidetracked by laughable character motivations – why would there be some much unexpected cruelty towards a person who is hard of hearing?

Mostly fed by indoor locales, Babbit creates an ideal playground for the prey and predator layout – a blue-tinted, HD gloss, heavy with murky shadows and night shoots suggests that this family has many dark secrets – safe to say that this is a different genre than her last feature, But I’m A Cheerleader. Even with all the atmospheric details, the entire premise hurts like sea salt in the eye – The Quiet is populated by characters in denial – pretty much the lasting impression any viewer might have stumbling upon this U.S indie. For revenge combined with incest check out The Sweet Hereafter instead.

Rating 0.5 stars