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Forget Snakes on a Plane—The Quiet is the new camp classic of the summer. And unlike the extensively calculated Snakes, The Quiet seems to be taking itself entirely seriously, which of course only makes it all the more hilarious. It's a mystery why it's being marketed as an art-house psychological drama, since it's clearly more likely to appeal to people who enjoy yelling at Tori Spelling in Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?
On the surface, at least, The Quiet is classier than your average trashy made-for-TV, teens-in-peril movie. But its somber tone and earnest performances do well to highlight just how ludicrous it really is. This is one of those movies that fancies itself clever for exposing the sinister underbelly of suburbia, with elisha Cuthbert as popular cheerleader Nina Deer, whose nominally average family of course conceals a bunch of deep, dark, predictable secrets.
To wit: Mom (edie Falco) is continually whacked-out on painkillers, and Dad (Martin Donovan) prefers sex with his daughter to sex with his wife. Nina pretends to be perky at school while secretly harboring homicidal fantasies. Into this volatile domestic tableau comes Dot (Camilla Belle), a surly teen whom the Deers take in after her father's death. Dot's deaf and mute, but she's still able to deliver purple, portentous narration about her bottomless angst.
All of this might be unbelievably tedious and boring, but the dialogue is so ripe and overwrought and the performances so dedicated that it plays as pure comedy, especially in the sexually graphic monologues delivered by Cuthbert and Aaron Stanford as a jock who falls for Dot.
Katy Mixon is a riot as Nina's mean-girl best friend, every line of her performance dripping with bitchy sarcasm. And director Jamie Babbit lays on the lesbian undertones so thickly that it's surprising Cuthbert and Belle and Mixon don't end up in a spontaneous Sapphic orgy. With Cuthbert alternately prancing around in cheerleader outfits or her skimpy underthings, Falco baring her breasts in a desperate bid for her husband's attention and an over-the-top plot twist you can see coming practically from the first frame, The Quiet is one champagne-fueled threesome away from becoming the next Wild Things.