The Quiet
If you love movies with incest, pill popping parents, vicious Bitchy teenagers, and catatonic deaf-mutes.....then Oh baby this is the movie for you!!!!! "The Quiet" may or may not keep you interested, may make you shy away from the screen by it's depravity, but ultimately does show some new-upcomming young talent.
Camilla Belle, stars as Dot, the deaf-mute orphan, who ends up in a mighty peculiar household, turned on its ears regularly by its resident and reigning teen, the cute-and-deadly Elisha Cuthbert.
Belle has an impossible task: she has to hold center stage, in constant close-ups, looking blank and bland and shut off from the world. There is no emotion more difficult to convey than the complete lack of (visible) emotions, and Belle makes a splendid run at it.
Cuthbert's task is daunting too: her role is that of both a victim and a perpetrator, a character both sympathetic and repulsive. In the lead of a large and fine cast - including Edie Falco, Katy Mixon, Martin Donovan, and Shawn Ashmore (Ice Man from Xmen) - Cuthbert and Belle make "The Quiet" work.
"The Quiet," however much it may hold you through most of the story, will leave you at the end stunned by the realization: you have just wasted 96 precious minutes of your presumably not unlimited lifespan.
Final Thoughts: 4/10
Seldom have I uttered the expression of "what the hell?" at a film when the credits started rollinge. For the end has kids going to "a dance" after fataly killing people, people taking responsibility for the death for no apparent reason, and completely glosses over all character flaws, then goes to credits.
Still, if the "end result" is not of great importance to you, "The Quiet" may just be the ticket for a lonely Saturday night, although definitely not as a date movie. For men, it's a major turnoff vis a vis young women; for women, it may cause lasting incertitude about men, old (especially) and young.
Labels: 4/10, Camilla Belle, Elisha Cuthbert, Shawn Ashmore, The Quiet
