The Quiet Ones: 10 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

In the late 50s through the early 70s a British film studio called Hammer was born.  Making a mixture of schlocky b-horror and science fiction films, they rose to fame by injecting a dose of violence and sex into the, at this point, dead Monster Movie genre.  Their versions of Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Mummy, live on to this day as some of the most unique spins on the Universal Monsters.  They also made a series of occult based films, some of my favorites, and psycho thrillers until the audience tastes shifted away and the studio ultimately disappeared.  Then a film called Let The Right One In, came out, and an English language remake under the revived Hammer Film Productions banner, Let Me In followed.  After a few other remakes, they finally produced their first truly "Hammer" piece since 1979's failed The Lady Vanishes remake with: The Quiet Ones.

The film is very loosely based on The Philip Experiment, in which a group of parapsychologists attempted to prove that mental energy could create a ghost.  Though most synopses of the film describe it as a story about a college professor who is attempting to create a poltergeist, I would say it's about an Oxford College Professor Joseph Coupland, played here by Jared Harris, seeking to prove that a human being can manifest kinetic energy.  Unfortunately, "The Experiment" goes awry when the test subject, Jane Harper (played by Olivia Cooke), begins to lose control of said energy and the story begins to drift into the realm of the occult.

The story is told from a mixed viewpoint of the third person omnicient and the first person perspective of Brian McNeil, played by Sam Claflin, hired by Professor Coupland to document his experiment, which is only referred to as "The Experiment" throughout the film.  It's like a mashup of found footage and standard story telling which works quite nicely, in my opinion, to tell the story and supply an ample amount of creeping tension.  More than once I found myself legitimately on edge in anticipation of the scares, getting caught off guard as many times.

What I liked most about the film is that it feels like a vintage Hammer film with a modern gloss.  Sure, the characters don't exactly look like they're from the 70s, the period in which the film is set, but the locations and the design did, which made up for it.  Not to mention it lovingly utilizes an old Gothic looking building as the central setting for story, similar to the old Hammer monster films.  Throw in some sex and an ample amount of violence and presto, you have a genuine Hammer Horror Film.  There were a few moments where the dialogue pulled me out, but overall they were barely noticeable as the actors were overall believable, Olivia Cooke's performance standing out along with Jared Harris.

Sadly, this film didn't do very well in the box office, for who knows how many factors.  It's not a perfect film, but it doesn't need to be either.  Perhaps I just have a proclivity for these kinds of stories.  I certainly find them much more interesting than the "in your face slasher film" or the "pure found footage curse-a-thon."

4 out of 5 skulls.