Movies
[BD Review] Life Is Too Short For ‘The Quiet Ones’
The film takes place at Oxford during the early 70’s and promptly ditches whatever potential atmosphere it could wring from that setting, content instead to merely showcase a few bad wardrobe decisions and implement faux Super 16 footage for no real reason. In fact, the decision to constantly oscillate between a traditionally shot film and the found footage aesthetic is endemic of this film’s identity crisis. It wants to be the Buzzfeed version of a slow burn supernatural thriller and as a result is neither kinetic or frightening.
Instead, it redefines the very core of what we as a society know about lurching narratives. The Quiet Ones is all second act. You’d think an abundance of scare scenes would be a good thing, but when they utterly fail to move the plot along or change any of the characters involved you’re left with a movie begging for attention in the most off-putting of ways. This is exacerbated by the fact that every single one of these scenes is followed by a maddening refutation from Jared Harris’ Professor Coupland that anything wrong or supernatural is afoot. Harris is actually good in this movie and I’d like to imagine he made a delightful wager with himself in regard to how many variations of “there’s nothing wrong here – we have to keep going” he could come up with.
These are the kind of films that make me fear for the horror genre. There are several credited writers on this project, and I would bet good money that any one of their standalone drafts are better than what was cobbled together here. But that would make a movie and The Quiet Ones isn’t a movie. It’s a mixtape of executive notes. A mixtape that manages to be not only bad, but boring as well – so much so that its 98 minutes seem to stretch the continuum of space and time. In the sense that it can make a better 3 hour movie appear brief by comparison, this film succeeds only in proving the theory of relativity.
If you’re going to make trash, at least make it awesome like Nurse 3D.
Movies
Julia Garner Joins Horror Movie ‘Weapons’ from the Director of ‘Barbarian’
In addition to Leigh Whannell’s upcoming Universal Monsters movie Wolf Man, Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel) has also joined the cast of Weapons, THR has announced tonight.
Weapons is the new horror movie from New Line Cinema and director Zach Cregger (Barbarian), with Julia Garner joining the previously announced Josh Brolin (Dune 2).
The upcoming Weapons is from writer/director Zach Cregger, who will also produce alongside his Barbarian producing team: Roy Lee of Vertigo and J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules of BoulderLight Pictures. Vertigo’s Miri Yoon also produces.
The Hollywood Reporter teases, “Plot details for Weapons are being kept holstered but it is described as a multi and inter-related story horror epic that tonally is in the vein of Magnolia, the 1999 actor-crammed showcase from filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.”
Cregger was a founding member and writer for the New York comedy troupe “The Whitest Kids U’Know,” which he started while attending The School of Visual Arts. The award-winning group’s self-titled sketch comedy show ran for five seasons on IFC-TV and Fuse. He was also a series regular on Jimmy Fallon’s NBC series “Guys with Kids” and the TBS hit series “Wrecked,” and was featured in a recurring role on the NBC series “About a Boy.”
Weapons will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures.