The Quiet Ones is a 2014 British supernatural horror film directed by John Pogue. The film was released on April 10, 2014 in the United Kingdom and April 25, 2014 in the United States. It stars Jared Harris as a college professor attempting to create a poltergeist. The film is loosely based on the Philip experiment, a 1972 parapsychology experiment conducted in Toronto.
Movie Details:
Directed by:John Pogue
Produced by:Ben Holden, James Gay-Rees, Simon Oakes, Steven Chester Prince, Tobin Armbrust
Written by: Craig Rosenberg, John Pogue, Oren Moverman, Tom de Ville
Starring: Jared Harris, Sam Claflin, Olivia Cooke, Erin Richards
Music by:Lucas Vidal
Cinematography: Mátyás Erdély
Edited byGlenn Garland
Production company: Hammer Film Productions, Travelling Picture Show Company
Distributed by: Lionsgate
Release date(s): 10 April 2014
Running time: 98 minutes
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Box office: $17,834,867
Plot:
Oxford, 1970s: A student attends the class of college professor, Coupland, who wishes to prove there is no supernatural. He shows a video of a possessed boy and explains that research will be done to find a cure for this kind of disease. One of his students, Brian McNeil (Sam Claflin), is invited to film the experiment process and joins Coupland, his two assistants Krissi (Erin Richards) and Harry (Rory Fleck-Byrne) and their subject Jane Harper (Olivia Cooke), a young woman who generates strange phenomena and has been abandoned. Jane is generally kept locked in a room with loud rock music playing during the daytime to prevent her from sleeping in the hopes that the psychological agitation will result in increased activity. Coupland and his assistants settle in an isolated house in the countryside to keep experimenting on Jane. Jane's negative energy takes the form of "Evey," an infant doll-like creature only Jane sees. Jane is then given a physical doll to put her negative energy in to destroy it. The further the researchers drive Jane to insanity with their methods, the stranger things get around the house. Brian is upset by the way Jane is treated and the lack of ethics in the experiment. Evey's apparitions become increasingly aggressive and Jane begins to self-harm. There are also worrying indicators that any attempt to harm Evey, harms Jane as well. Coupland refuses to stop the inhumane experimentation while the others become convinced that Evey is a true malevolent force. Brian and Jane become closer, sharing a kiss. When the group experience another attack by Evey, Brian goes to Oxford, where he discovers that a symbol that was marked into Jane is from a cult, which worshiped a Sumerian demon, that did experiments on a young girl a few years back; their leader believed Evey Dwyer, a girl with clairvoyant abilities, to be the one to bring their "idol" into the physical world. Everybody in the cult died in a house fire that Evey set, including Evey herself. Brian goes back and tells them about the cult, he is certain that Evey is a demonic presence who is possessing Jane and convinces Harry and Krissi of this, but Coupland denies his theory and responds that Evey must be a figment from Jane's past rather than a demonic force (perhaps her parents read the story to her from a newspaper and Jane's subconscious is merely manifesting that persona). After a heated argument, the group are all marked with the same symbol Jane had. Krissi and Harry are gruesomely murdered by an unknown force. Jane realizes that she was the little girl that supposedly died in the house fire; she was born with clairvoyant powers and had set the house on fire to kill everyone. The authorities changed her name to Jane to give her a normal life and that's the reason why all her negative energy is manifesting; Evey isn't a demon, she's Jane's real identity (one who can't escape the trauma of her past life no matter how hard her mind has tried to repress it). Jane/Evey then attacks Brian, only for them both to be knocked out by Coupland. When Brian wakes up, he finds Coupland giving Jane a lethal injection as he thinks stopping her heart long enough for the negative energy to dissipate would permanently cure her. However, before Coupland is given a chance to be proven either wrong or correct, Brian saves Jane and subdues Coupland, but Jane locks him out of the room and commits suicide by setting herself on fire.
The screen cuts to a film footage, showing Brian sitting in a chair, holding a camera. Somebody asks him what happened and how everybody died. Brian explains that everything that happened was captured on film. The person says that there is nothing on the film, and that everything in the house, including the films, was destroyed by the fire. Brian laughs manically and his hand starts to smoke, just as Jane's did.