Continuing the new iteration of Hammer Horror Films after the hugely successful The Woman In Black a couple of years ago, The Quiet Ones is a handsomely shot but nevertheless frustratingly ordinary British horror that seems infected by ideas of similar films past without bringing much new to the table.
The plot follows Oxford University Professor Coupland (Jared Harris) who has been carrying out suspect experiments to test his theory that the supernatural is merely a manifestation of the mind, using funds from the university to do so. However, when the funds are stopped he asks a group of enthusiastic students, including budding cameraman Brian (Sam Claflin), to stay with him at a secluded house in the countryside so he can continue his experiments on Jane (Olivia Cooke), a troubled young mental patient who is only partially willing.
It’s essentially an old-fashioned horror that incorporates that most modern of the genre’s obsessions, found-footage, but it finds the film standing on an awkward middle ground between the old and the new. The more traditional, stately look and feel of the ’70s is uncomfortably at odds with the bells and whistles of what modern audiences expect from a horror. Everything you expect to see is pretty much to be found here, from the ghostly looking young woman as the focal point of the plot to the heavy reliance on jump-scares, neither of which is particularly scary no matter how long it lingers on her staring eyes or waits in a lull of quietness before popping something out at you.
Director and co-writer John Pogue, who previously wrote the likes of Ghost Ship and Quarantine 2, does a decent job of setting things up and occasionally creates some nicely chilling atmosphere but fails to deliver the scary goods when it really matters. The fact that the script also has two other names attached may explain why the whole thing feels cluttered and unfocused, mashing together its hodgepodge of ideas until an over-the-top finale that fails to tie things together in any sort of satisfying manner.
The film should thank its lucky stars, then, that it has Harris in the lead role who brings a much-need sense of gravitas and immediacy to an otherwise safe offering from a company that was once the master of British horror. Even when the script throws up some frankly ridiculous supernatural mumbo jumbo masquerading as dialogue, Harris delivers it in such a way that you believe what he’s saying. The supporting actors are well cast, too, from Claflin as the naive cameraman Brian to Olivia Cooke as the disturbed lab rat Jane, who makes the best out of a rather hackneyed role.
The film’s cast and production design stop the film from entering the disaster zone, however it’s disappointing to find that it doesn’t conjure more scares than the odd raised hair or two, while obvious similarities to the The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the aforementioned The Woman in Black and the like do it no favours as it merely pales in comparison. It’s perfectly possible to make something that feels influenced by films that have come before while still creating something fresh and, most importantly, genuinely scary out of it as the likes of The Conjuring and Insidious have shown. But sadly The Quiet Ones isn’t, well, one of them as it will leave anyone but the newest of horror converts feeling let down.
