Sometimes a movie is so repulsive and devoid of redeeming material that afterward, you’re certain it doesn’t deserve to exist.
No, this is not a review of “Garfield 2” on DVD. The kind of infuriating movie I’m talking about exists in the art houses too, and I’m afraid one arrives this week in a nasty little package labeled “The Quiet.”
“The Quiet” combines the lewd qualities of the teen-sex drama “Cruel Intentions” with the shot-through-a-veil cinematic atrocities of the TV titillator “Silk Stalkings.” As a bonus, “The Quiet” manages to offend any category of potential viewer: the deaf, the hearing, mothers, fathers, daughters, orphans, non-orphans, cheerleaders, cheerleader fetishists … did I leave anyone out?
Imagine “Twin Peaks” made not by David Lynch but by high school sophomores at a local public-access cable channel, and you’ll get the idea.
The ostensible plot of “The Quiet” brings apparently deaf- mute teenager Dot (Camille Bell) to live with her godparents, the Deer family, after her deaf father dies in a car accident. Dot’s mother died of cancer when Dot was 7.
Dot is a bit odd – not just silent, but downright catatonic – but her adoptive family is also a few throw pillows short of a full sofa. Teenage sister Nina (Elisha Cuthbert, no smarter or more convincing than her much-critiqued role on Fox’s “24”) calls Dot a “retard,” indicating she was too busy in cheerleading classes to catch any of those Sesame Street episodes on celebrating diversity. Daddy Deer (Martin Donovan) is his daughter’s biggest cheerleader, if you know what I mean, and his incestuous leanings are not kept abstract for long. If she knows what’s good for her, Dot may want to shake off the mute portion of her post-traumatic syndrome to belt out a good scream.
Mommy Deer-est (Edie Falco), meanwhile, takes too many pain pills and helpfully tells Dot that her mother had been “a slut.” And Dot gets a boyfriend who likes to test her deafness by describing his sexual obsessions while her eyes are turned away from his lips.
None of these people seem remotely real, nor does the supporting cast. The high school in “The Quiet” is filled with the kind of all-knowing, all-bitchy teen girls who have become the movies’ worst cliché in recent years. The shooting style doesn’t help – nearly every nighttime scene in “The Quiet” is infused with some form of low-level smoke that makes this indie seem like a vampire movie, sans teeth.
With no characters to like, no script lines to remember and no artistic touches to admire, “The Quiet” is tone deaf – but unfortunately not mute – on all levels. Now that preseason football is almost at an end, it would be hard to imagine a more irritating way to spend 90 minutes.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at mbooth@denverpost.com.
“The Quiet”
R for gratuitous sex, violence and language|1 hour, 35 minutes|SHOCK THRILLER|Directed by Jamie Babit; written by Abdi Nazemian and Micah Schraft; starring Elisha Cuthbert, Camilla Belle, Edie Falco and Martin Donovan|Opens today at Landmark’s Mayan Theatre.
