A Marca do Medo

So, The Quiet Ones. I gave this film an 8 out of 10. I would however give it a rating of 7.8 if I could.

The Positives: The Quiet Ones is very successful in building up tension. It builds it up and then a jump scene comes at you and throws you out of your seat!

It is also a great concept. As the story progresses you begin to see more to the story than what we first thought.

Also TQO manages to go into different stories based on real legends (e.g. The theories they come up with and the covens they slightly touch upon.)

It is also quite creepy and intense with many scenes that make you say to yourself: WTF?!

The Negatives: TQO does not go deep enough into the story. They could have made the run time longer resulting in the movie being a lot more frightening. At the end of the movie, clearly not destined for a sequel we are left with many un-answered questions.

It is easily forgettable! After watching the film I simply left the screening. I did not take a minute to think about what I watched, literally the second I left the cinema I forgot about it.

The ending is also very disappointing. After all the build up I bet you were expecting a dramatic, jaw dropping climax?.... Well this movie does not offer that. Up until the end all the other negatives could have easily been forgiven. All it would have needed was a better ending.

And finally I'm going to tell you the problem with this film that occurs all of the time. 'Based on a true story'. If you are a director reading this STOP ADDING THOSE 5 WORDS! It makes the film feel scarier obviously but it also makes the director have to keep it realistic and that is usually a big downfall!

So 7.8 is what I give this film. It is creepy, jumpy and an interesting mix of found footage genre cinematography and regular cinematography. However; TQO simply isn't very believable and it is not good enough to get out of the 7 rating.

THE QUIET ONES is another disappointing effort put out by the new and revamped Hammer Films. It's a generic science-team-researches-ghost type effort, obviously modelled on old-fashioned epics like THE STONE TAPE, yet the material is so sub-standard and predictable that it becomes very difficult to sit through, let alone enjoy.

The entire blame for the failure can be laid on the script, which took at least four people to write; four diverse folk who between them wrote everything from URBAN Gothic and RAMPART to THE UNINVITED and QUARANTINE 2: TERMINAL . Everything else is adequate APART from the script: Sam Claflin is an acceptable lead actor, and Jared Harris is pleasingly old-fashioned in his approach to his role. I liked the idea of the 1970s setting and the film-within-a-film type material is always fun.

Unfortunately, the story boils down to all the old possession clichés, and even a few ridiculous CGI scenes here and there (thankfully they're kept extremely brief). Attempts to build mystery are negated by having an exceptionally dull explanation at the end, plus one of those stupid last-reel twists It's hardly a wonder that Hammer have gone very quiet recently, as none of their new films are remotely like their classics of old.

A psychiatrist takes a team of people to a retreat with a mental health patient in order to help her. Part of the process is the conducting of a series of experiments which go terribly awry.

An initial struggle for me was how can a doctor be allowed to take a vulnerable patient away and use as a guinea pig; the ease with which it occurred, caused certain moral thrash. As the story moves on, certain inexplicable incidents occur with seem to trouble the entire team.

Of course these "incidents" have had to take place since this is after all a horror film. The events cause a certain split as the doctor in charge believes there is a naturalistic explanation behind it whilst some of the team hold the view that there is a transcendent reality beyond what we see, feel and understand.

On the whole, it is an effective horror film as the story progresses with good pace, upping the intensity with the passing of time. It is held back by a rather sense of predictability due to a highly worked story/theme (night/dark/silence interrupted by a sudden noisy intervention) and a not very believable initiating incident (the taking of a patient away for experimentation).

This isnt a bad movie. It just really irritates me when they purposely make the dialog barely audible so that you turn your tv up so you can follow the story. Then have all manner of loud noises to get cheap jump scares out of the audience. To me thats the biggest signal of a weak ass plot line or some other difficency the director or writers are trying to make up for. This movie is full of cheap jump scares with some real creepiness every so often.

Aside from The Exorcist, possession films always seem so lacking. They never have enough real, human tension. They focus on predictable jump scares and an even more predictable plot. It's safe to say that, in general, possession films don't have much to offer. Thankfully, The Quiet Ones does not suffer from the same faults of many other similar films.

Rather than simply focus on the dark progression of a possessed being, The Quiet Ones presents the frustrating fears that torment the young, inexperienced scientists, as they struggle with their desire to help a suffering being through the means of science and logic, the underlying threat of possible demonic possession,and the obsessive nature of Professor Coupland.

The performance of the cast is top notch, the effects are subtle, the only disappointing aspect was the very, very end, and the fact that as a whole, the film just wasn't that scary. Still, if the concept of possession interests you, but you've been disappointed with past projects, you might want to give this a shot.