Powerful

Please don't spend money on this.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Certain things are obvious, especially if you have seen a movie or two. But if you haven't read anything about this, don't fear, I won't spoil anything. Especially the one dark secret concerning Cuthberts character. And even writing this I don't really give anything away. But be cautious because we are talking really messed up when it comes to that particular part of the story.And it's something you'll see early on (though fortunately not in full detail) and it should disturb. That's something the movie is aiming for. The acting is good and you get as much tension as is necessary. The characters are very well defined and this is more than decent overall

Dot (Camilla Belle) is a deaf mute orphan living with her godparents, the Deers. She's a loner at school, and pushed around by cheerleader Nina Deer (Elisha Cuthbert) and mean girlfriend Michelle Fell. The Deers are hiding some very dark secrets. The mother Olivia Deer (Edie Falco) is hooked on prescription drugs. Dot discovers Paul Deer (Martin Donovan) is sexually sleeping with daughter Nina. Dot is partnered with basketball star Connnor Kennedy (Shawn Ashmore) in class. He becomes intrigued when he sees her playing a piano. Then Nina discovers Dot may actually be able to hear.Dot being deaf or not being deaf is the best concept in this thriller. It's too bad that it's completely ruined by her narration. By itself, the narrations are boring and lame. The worst part is that it takes away from her deafness. The movie needs to play up her deafness, not play it down. She needs to do more signing and fake deaf talking. The mean girls should be trying to fake her out. Nina's discovery should be pushed back a bit. This should have been a big plus but the narration makes it a minor fail. The psycho sexual thriller is part camp and part awkward. Director Jamie Babbit never really nails down the tone. This all starts with the deaf issue. After failing so badly, the rest of the movie struggles to recover. This could have been an interesting thriller but the execution really screws it up.

Similar to American Beauty, the 1999 Academy Award Winner for Best Picture, "The Quiet" is even more disturbing. For among its themes about disabilities, murder, hidden lesbianism, and inhumanity, it also features incest. The revelation about incest is no spoiler, as you will be able to pick it up early on. Teen Dot (Camilla Belle), a deaf-mute who lost both parents, moves into the three-member household of the Deer family: mother Olivia (Edie Falco), father Paul (Martin Donovan), and teen daughter Nina (Elisha Cuthbert). The family is troubled. Passive mom cannot seem to get dad's attention, no matter what she does, even if she strips down to her underwear. Olivia, addicted to prescription pharmaceuticals, may even be losing her mind. And, although both teen girls are very attractive, Nina treats Dot awfully. She is relentless about her actions, which continue in school among her friends. Nina is a virginal cheerleader who hangs out with annoying, trash-talking school chum Katy (Michelle Fell). Katy is hot for school basketball player Connor (Shawn Ashmore). Dot is a brooding introvert, an undeveloped personality who wears dull clothing and is friendless. Nina is also traumatized (but in an opposite way from Dot), and finds an unusual way of coping. Over time, despite their appearances as polar opposites, there is a gradual erosion of detachment. In fact both young ladies actually have much in common, and even share double lives. Meanwhile Dot harbors a secret that completely alters events once it is revealed, but it won't happen early on. Meanwhile, daddy is an ogre and admits it. The title of course refers to Dot, the heroine of the movie. People think she is oblivious to the world situation, but she sucks up information like a sponge. The incest scenes are very painful to stomach. Like "American Beauty" before it, the film parodies the dysfunctional family. But then again, the acting is fine all around, and the character development is well-done. And note the symbolism, the darkened rooms of the household and the rooms almost devoid of furniture. They tell us of the sinister secrets lurking about. On the other hand, what is the purpose of this movie? Where is it supposed to be heading? Although there are eerie elements, the sordid story is not really exciting. And the ending, although there is a twist, is not exactly uplifting.

This is another one of those movies that's all about how life in suburban America isn't as perfect as it seems, with cruelty and brutality and degeneracy seething under its placid surface. There must be a lot of filmmakers who had awful suburban childhoods because they keep making this same story over and over again, even though it ceased to original or shocking when Knot's Landing debuted on TV back in the 1980s. They can still occasionally make a good one, like American Beauty. The Quiet, however, is a fairly lifeless entry into the genre.Dot (Camilla Belle) is a teenage girl whose parents are dead and has ended up in the custody of her godparents. This suburban family has all the requisite pieces. There's Olivia (Edie Falco), the pill-popping mom. Nina (Elisha Cuthbert) is the hot and bitchy cheerleader daughter. Paul (Martin Donovan) is the enabling dad who has to parent both his manipulative daughter and his drugged-out wife. There's also Nina's best friend Michelle (Katy Mixon), who is like a trashier, bitchier version of Nina. Connor (Shawn Ashmore) rounds out the main cast as the standard issue handsome high school athlete.The Quiet does throw three new wrinkles into this set up. The expected love triangle isn't Nina-Connor-Dot. It's actually Michelle-Connor-Dot. That's because Nina is having an incestuous relationship with her father Paul. Oh, and Dot is pretending to be a deaf-mute to whom everyone spills their secrets because they think she can't hear.You can probably guess how the script of this film goes, with people discovering secrets about other people and then pretending they don't know them. Dot's supposed deafness is the excuse for character monologues that are supposed to be provocative but are really quite wooden. Nina and Dot are enemies, then they're frenemies and then they're friends. A teddy bear gets his face burned off, Edie Falco walks around topless, somebody dies and the movie peters out after that.The Quiet isn't a bad movie but it isn't much of a story. It has the setting and the pieces of a story, yet they never come together in any meaningful way. It never gets much into why Dot is faking being deaf and dumb to isolate herself from the world. Sometimes Nina is a bitch because she's compensating for her own anger and self-loathing, sometimes Nina is just a bitch and the film never differentiates between the two. Olivia could just have easily been a cardboard cut-out with the words "absent mom" scribbled on it. Paul swings from someone way too passive and well-adjusted to be having sex with his teenage daughter to a violent brute straight out of a woman-in-peril movie on the Lifetime channel. The only intriguing aspect of this script is the relationship between Nina and Michelle. You can see that Nina connects with Michelle, even though she's a disgusting skank, because Nina feels comfortable being with someone worse than she is.To sum up, The Quiet is one of those independent movies that's more concerned with being artistic than entertaining. It almost entirely succeeds at not being entertaining. To the same extent, it fails at being artistic. Edie Falco's also the only one who gets naked in this film, so unless you've got a hankering for middle aged boobs, there's little else here.