Shared Darkness

So self-serious, so very indie and so very dreadful, The Quiet
is
marked by a bracing solemnity, except that it doesn’t fancy itself a
satirical goof on that tone. An exposé of idyllic suburbia that offers
forth
the surface appearance of evocative contrasts with none of the
corresponding psychological depth, the movie is an undeservedly
self-satisfied drama, and a bore to boot.

Leading the parade of
wafer-thin characterizations is high-school cheerleader Nina (Elisha Cuthbert, above left), whose sneering, unsubstantiatedly vicious
demeanor is egged on by an equally catty and bitchy friend, Michelle
(Katy Mixon). Nina has an outwardly perfect life, which naturally means
that she’s masking a dark secret. The most immediately apparent source
of Nina’s irritation is Dot (When a Stranger Calls’ Camilla
Belle), a silent, presumably deaf girl, whom Nina’s parents, architect
Paul (Martin Donovan) and interior decorator Olivia (Edie Falco), have
taken in after the death of her father. Dot is the very definition of
unassuming, but nonetheless becomes a whipping post for Nina’s pent-up
anger — even more so when letterman Connor (Shawn Ashmore), Michelle’s
crush of the moment, expresses an interest in her. All manner of
guarded secrets then come tumbling forth, both in confession and
through deduction, with life-altering consequences for nearly all those
involved.

The Quiet is actually director Jamie Babbit’s second feature film (she’s also helmed episodes of Popular, Gilmore Girls and Nip/Tuck), but it exhibits none of the colorful eccentricity of her first — the zonked-out high school lesbian comedy But I’m a Cheerleader,
which I found kind of awful, but at least flamboyant and original, bad in an
interesting fashion. Penned by Abdi Nazmian and Micah Schraft, The Quiet
merely substitutes tranquility for perspicacity, and is driven by the
twin engines of illogicality and whimsicality. Characters are defined
frequently only through others’ descriptions of them; Olivia is a pill-popping, emotionally
inattentive zombie, though we see no evidence of that in our first (and
longest) encounter with her. Connor, meanwhile, is a “hunk” (and
desired by Michelle) merely because he’s the only
young male in the movie. The movie is shot, furthermore, in what is possibly the most dimly lit
house ever.

Then there’s the niggling matter of Dot’s deafness and muteness.
Throughout the film, it’s advanced that she can read lips if people are
facing her. Yet The Quiet, a movie presumably predicated upon
carefully modulated mood and a few key revelations, is remarkably slack
about enforcing this scene to scene, so twists that in theory should
surprise characters within the movie will have you howling, “Idiot!” at
the screen. By the time The Quiet’s utterly preposterous ending
unravels — complete with a bizarre, out-of-left-field false confession
that both makes no sense within the actual narrative and offers no
sense of authentic catharsis, release or reprieve for the character(s)
it lets off the hook — you’ll be struck dumb in your own way.

The movie is presented in 2.35 anamorphic widescreen, which preserves the aspect ration of its initial theatrical presentation; it also comes with Dolby digital 5.1 surround and Dolby digital 2.0 surround sound English language audio tracks (French and Spanish on the latter as well), and a healthy clutch of subtitles in five different languages. DVD special features include a five-minute dissection of a high school classroom dissection scene within the movie (can we say random?) and a nice seven-minute on-location featurette which examines the movie’s Austin-based shoot. There are also three more brief featurettes on the film’s use of digital photography, its casting, and script development. All of these clock in between five and just under 10 minutes, and while passably interesting, they do raise a flag of potential irritation in that they mention (and show, via on-set footage) various extra scenes and story strands… that we then don’t get to see in unexpurgated form. That’s the definition of a tease, something which The Quiet‘s suggestively tawdy box cover would have you believe is much more a part of the main attraction. D (Movie) B (Disc)

  a routine
Spanish Fly-smuggling trip back from Mexico, two friends stumble upon an
out-of-the-way gentlemen’s club with no cover charge and plenty of sexy,
friendly ladies,” you know that your
life just got better — which is to say, irrespective of the quality of the movie
that follows, you will forevermore have, in your life, the memory of the
phrase, “During a routine Spanish Fly-smuggling trip back from Mexico…”

Yes, Devil’s Den is
that movie. And yes, it’s every bit as ridiculous as you might suspect given
even that one line. What’s that? Oh, right, right… I’ve neglected to mention
the specifics of the rest of the narrative arc. A sort of low-grade rip-off of From Dusk ’Til Dawn, Devil’s Den unfolds at the same-named
strip club, which is actually a recruiting station and portal for an army of flesh-eating
undead. Backed into a corner, drug-running film geek Quinn (Devon Sawa, aka
that kid from Final Destination, and currently
a poor man’s Shane West), trigger-happy assassin Caitlin (Kelly Hu, a loooong
way from the comforts of X-Men
franchise and even The Scorpion King),
samurai demon hunter Leonard (horror icon Ken Foree, of the original Dawn of the Dead, plus Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects), and airhead
cocktail waitress Candy (Karen Maxwell) must band together and do battle with ferocious
hordes of possessed, gut-ripping strippers.

There’s actually some halfway funny B-movie dialogue here (“Can’t
we just enjoy the spoils of that particular victory?” queries Quinn plaintively,
in making a case for not going deeper into the lair and searching out the “queen”
undead/vampire stripper). There’s also, believe it or not, a full-blown Zatoichi
fantasy sequence (!), for which I give the filmmakers mad props. Still, the
fact remains that limited means and shoddy execution absolutely murder any sort of
relative, to-scale chance this movie has; dialogue is mangled, and all action
is shot in a dirty, over-the-shoulder style that screams unplanned, seat-of-the-pants direction.
Helmer Jeff Burr is a stunt veteran who’s racked up a bunch of genre credits
(including Stepfather II), but he
brings nothing to the table here as far as skillful evocation of goosing mood.
This movie is a decent showcase for one of the most unfortunately maligned
guilds in Hollywood — the Buxom
Stunt Ladies of America
— but nothing more.

Presented in an Amray case with an embossed foil O-card slipcover,
Devil’s Den comes with a 1.78:1 widescreen
transfer, enhanced for 16×9 TVs. The disc does, though, actually include a good bit of supplemental material — an audio commentary track with
Burr, a brief making-of featurette with good-natured interviews with most of
the cast (big shocker: Sawa was inked the night before shooting began) and a blooper
reel that reveals Hu to be just a little bit petulant (concerned about her lighting
and angles, but still flubbing plenty of lines). There’s also a photo gallery and a copy of
the screenplay on DVD-ROM. Too bad the product itself weren’t more worthy of the celebration. Oh well, at least we’ll always have that routine Spanish Fly-smuggling trip… D (Movie) B+ (Disc)