The Quiet
reminds me of that old Conan O’Brien sketch, which I haven’t seen in a
while, entitled “Seeee-crets,” wherein a guest usually participates in
a taped confessional by admitting, with clench-jawed commitment, to
some absurd, mock-dark skeleton in the closet. The Quiet is
marked by a similar solemnity, except that it doesn’t fancy itself a
joke. Shot by M. David Mullen in what is possibly the most dimly lit
house ever, it’s a dreadfully self-serious and undeservedly
self-satisfied drama, an exposé of idyllic suburbia that offers forth
the surface appearance of evocative contrasts with none of the
corresponding psychological depth.

Leading the parade of
wafer-thin characterizations is high-school cheerleader Nina (Elisha Cuthbert, also a producer), whose sneering, unsubstantiatedly vicious
demeanor is egged on by an equally catty and bitchy friend, Michelle
(Katy Mixon). This, despite an outwardly perfect life, 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 dreadful, but at least flamboyant and original, bad in an
interesting fashion. Penned by Abdi Nazmian and Micah Schraft, though, 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, and rarely
through their own behavior. 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, quite explicitly, by Michelle) merely because he’s the only
young male in the movie. The only instance in the story in which this
doesn’t really hold true stands in stark, further jarringly contrast
because of these failings in dimensional shading.

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. (Sony Pictures Classics, R, 95 mins.)