The Quiet Ones (4/10)

Sam Claflin in an interview described The Quiet Ones as "jumpy" because even though they read it and shot it, he still got "jumped" a lot.

Let me explain why you jumped so much, Mr. Claflin. Because this movie is filled with ridiculously loud sound effects that were designed to make you jump even when it wasn't scary at all.

I think the makers of the movie wanted desperately for this to be a full fledged horror movie and not a thriller, and realising it actually wasn't that scary, decided to put in all those loud sound effects that drowned out everything else in the cinema.

And it's not just sprinkled here and there, it's throughout the entire movie! Every chance they get, every time they want to scare the audience, silence and a sudden loud sound effect. Every time this happens in a horror movie, I lose complete respect for it because the director has no idea how to create a scary atmosphere or a story to scare the audience and had to resort to cheap tricks.

I'm not saying director John Pogue is incompetent, because actually the way he told the story was very eerie and suspenseful. He kept me wondering what was the real threat right till the very end. But if he had made this a thriller like Shutter Island, it may have fared much better.

The cast were brilliant. Jared Harris always deliver and should do more horror movies. Olivia Cooke really made you feel like you want to protect her. Erin Richards was convincingly the sexy vixen. And Rory Fleck-Byrne was a strong supporting cast.

I especially liked Harris's character, portraying the brilliant and yet misguided mentor, and with a questionable morale that came off so well.

This was inspired by a true case of the past where all the tapes were burned and no evidence was left except one. So nobody actually knew what really happened.

So for John Pogue and his team to recreate this story into a movie, they would have had to make up a lot of things as they went along. And clearly they did because none of the scares made any sense. Why things and events happened the way they did had no explanations.

And I really dislike how when members of the group left the house, things happened to them as well. That's really tacky.

As for how the movie ended, bollocks. Even the title, The Quiet Ones, is quite self-absorbed.

And now for the spoiler questions. If you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading here!

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Why. Why brand everyone with that sigil and only kill off only two and not all of them. You could argue that because those were the ones who left her there and wanted to go back to their lives outside the house. Sure, but why brand all four if she's not going to kill the other two?

After we know the truth at the end, think back to when Cooke's character suddenly went up to the attic, started screaming for help, and then proceeded to cradle the invisible baby. That sequence didn't make sense because Cooke and Evy were the same person.

It made sense when she projected herself onto the doll. But the doll wasn't even there at that time. And we saw she coughed out blood when the doll was stabbed so yes, she was connected.

And finally, Harris's hand got bitten. Bollocks.