It's rare that films that claim that they are "based on" or "inspired by" a true story turn out to be telling the truth, but The Quiet Ones is one of those films. Granted, there are some pretty big liberties being taken with that "inspired by", but it's enough to mention. In this case, the movie was "inspired by" something called the "Philip Experiment" that took place in Toronto in 1972. A group of amateur parapsychologists set out to effectively "create" a ghost and make it real through their own belief - a tulpa, basically. The experiment had inconclusive results and was a bad experiment in general because of a lack of controls, but it still inspired people to try their own experiments and to make movies about it.
Set in 1974, The Quiet Ones centres around Jane Harper, a young woman with either severe mental disorders or some sort of psychic ability that seems to manifest as poltergeist activity. An Oxford professor, Joseph Coupland, has a theory that this is all caused by "negative mental energy" and has set up an experiment to prove this, complete with methods that make the Stanford Experiment seem like a gentle series of Rorschach tests. He has two of his students/devotees assisting with this, as well as a young cameraman called Brian to record the proceedings. Brian starts falling for Jane, however, and between his emotional attachment to her and Professor Coupland's fanaticism to prove his theory at all costs it becomes clear that things are not going to end well in this experiment.
If I was to describe The Quiet Ones in one sentence, it would be, "Like a 1970s version of Ghostwatch". About half of the film is seen through the lens of Brian's camera (complete with 70s rounded corners and film look, which was a nice touch, and most importantly of all - no night vision), which makes it at least one-half mockumentary, while the other half is shot in the more traditional way. It's also one of Hammer Film Productions' new films that they've brought out over the last several years for their return to cinema, and for most of the film it certain has a level of high psychological horror to it - until the final 10-15 minutes, when the body count suddenly shoots up as though someone shot it out of a cannon. And that's really the biggest failing of the movie - it builds up the tension and atmosphere pretty well through the first three-quarters or so of the film, and then suddenly seems to think "Hey, let's try some of that new horror shit that the kids are all hip to!" and then there's blood on the walls.
The other big fault of the film is that its plot revelations are all too predictable. The blonde sexpot student? You know she's sleeping with her professor the moment she first calls him by his first name (and possibly even before). You can just tell that our protagonist cameraman is going to get all emotional about Jane and want to save her. And of course you know that the professor's pet theory about being able to "cure" psychic phenomena is going to come crashing down around him by the end of them film (although to be fair, it wouldn't be much of a film if he'd been proved right). I will admit, though, that I completely guessed the "revelation" twist wrong, and that the afore-mentioned revelation made perfect sense in the framework of the film.
By far the best thing of the film is in fact the actress who plays Jane, Olivia Cooke. She looks and acts utterly desperate and haunted from everything that has happened to her; both fragile and manipulative at the same time, which is exactly how she needs to be. Jared Harris, who plays Professor Coupland, on the other hand, doesn't give a subtle performance at all - he chows down on the scenery like a man who hasn't eaten for a whole week. This isn't a bad thing, however - there needs to be a certain amount of bombastic fanaticism from his character to hurtle the film towards its inevitable climax.
One final, small problem however - I'm pretty damn sure that the sigil in the film is a Freemasonry one, and not something to summon Pazuzu's cousin or whatever comes up in the film.
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