The Quiet Ones (2014)

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  TheMovieDiorama

  4 / 10

  The Quiet Ones, despite the loud piercing jump scares, remains too quiet with its thrills. Parapsychological thrillers will always interest me. Blending supernatural tension with the complexity of psychology can make for some intriguing themes, many of which may be deemed as thought-provoking. This horror film however, falls short in most areas. Loosely based on the Philip Experiment, a university professor and a group of students experiment on a girl to prove that poltergeists are manifestations of the human psych as opposed to supernatural entities. Sounds interesting right? Correct, and this should've been more intriguing than what was actually executed. My attention was immediately drawn to the experiment. The psychology behind it rather fascinates me, and I appreciate that the screenplay dabbles into the morality and ethics of this test. At the end of the day they are torturing a girl and coagulating all of her negative energy into creating a fictitious character, whether you view that as inhumane of scientifically necessary is left for debate. The script involves you, allowing you to cast your own opinion. Just a shame the characters were incredibly one-dimensional and the thrills were non-existent. The jump scares consisted of extremely loud piercing noises. That was it. I had to pat my sound bar at the end of the film and say "it's alright, you can rest your speakers now...it's done". Harris gives a commanding performance and both Cooke and Claflin support him well. But again, the script doesn't allow any character development to be had. The small use of visual effects were uninspired, but given the extremely low budget I'll let it slide. Then we get to the concluding act and unfortunately it crumbles under its own weight. I would've preferred a more intelligent ending as opposed to a clichéd supernatural twist. It's not that I didn't like it, I just don't necessarily agree with how it was conveyed. It's a shame really, director Pogue had some decent material to work with yet somehow translated what should've been a thrilling horror into an unmemorable bore.

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