The Quiet Ones

Film Review by Chris Buckle | 11 Apr 2014
Film title: The Quiet Ones
Director: John Pogue
Starring: Jared Harris, Sam Claflin, Olivia Cooke
Release date: 11 Apr
Certificate: 15

The first of The Quiet Ones’ many jump-scares comes courtesy of Noddy Holder, with a loud blast of Slade’s Cum on Feel the Noize in the opening minutes to signal both the period setting and director John Pogue’s rudimentary approach to spooking an audience. The blaring music, it transpires, is part of a series of ethically and scientifically dubious experiments (led by Jared Harris’s monomaniacal Oxford don, assisted by a couple of shacked-up student disciples and a guileless cameraman) that are designed to isolate a psychiatric patient’s “negative energy” and create from it a kind of psychosomatic poltergeist.

It’s an intriguing setup, but it masks a rote demon possession tale that’s packed with clichés: occult birthmarks, dead-eyed dolls, an egotistical academic with a god complex, and so on. This isn’t a death blow in itself (Hammer’s last production The Woman in Black did well out of its familiar ingredients, after all), but Pogue repeatedly allows tension to dissipate, and only a handful of moments come close to inspiring actual fear. Otherwise, it’s cheap jolts all the way.