Somewhere Quiet review.
We’re back on the trauma horror wagon for Somewhere Quiet…a story that picks up where most horror movies leave off.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Somewhere Quiet
Directed by Olivia West Lloyd
Written by Olivia West Lloyd
Starring Jennifer Kim, Marin Ireland, Micheál Neeson, Kentucker Audley, Jan Devereaux, Dave Whitmore and Paula Loud
Somewhere Quiet Review
The trauma of surviving an abduction leaves us with an unreliable narrator in Somewhere Quiet. When the protagonist can’t trust her own eyes…how can we know what is real? That isn’t exactly the question that Somewhere Quiet asks…but it is a big part of discovering all its answers. Yeah…we’re back to trauma horror again. The hottest subgenre out there continues to crank them out. If they were all as interesting as this one…I wouldn’t bother to bring it up so often.
Meg (Jennifer Kim) escapes from six months of captivity. She and her husband Scott (Kentucker Audley) head to his family’s remote cabin to find peace. Strange visions and a visit from Scott’s cousin Madelin (Marin Ireland) offer Meg anything but. She begins to suspect that her husband was complicit in her abduction…and that Madelin isn’t what she claims to be. Or perhaps Meg is seeing more things that aren’t there.
The first thing to know about Somewhere Quiet is that Jennifer Kim is fantastic. Meg can never be fully sure of what is going on around her. She has distinct memories of her husband sleepwalking…or accidentally breaking a plate…but Scott mentions she had been sleepwalking and broke a glass the day before. Is she being gaslit? Has her trauma caused a break with reality? The movie lets things play out in equally plausible ways. Meg’s accusations can be very convincing. So too are people’s responses. The two sides never fully line up. It’s impossible to determine which, if either, is correct.
Meg can’t trust anything that happens in Somewhere Quiet. Even if she sees it with her own eyes. That means that we can’t either. Her trauma centers around her abduction. She harbors resentment for her husband not finding her…and questions regarding his activities the night it happened. An easy way to look at it is as a sequel of sorts to a story we aren’t privy to. This is the survivor/final girl after her movie ends. Broken by horrible circumstance…unable to trust anything or anyone.
Kentucker Audley ably plays up both a character you can’t trust, and a man distressed by his wife’s traumatic situation. Marin Ireland (Birth/Rebirth) gives us a character who is easy to question…but could be an innocent bystander caught in a heavy situation. For most of Somewhere Quiet…there is no way to know. The story is at its best when you are questioning everything. A state it remains firmly locked in most of the time.
Tensions ramp up (at least for Meg) as she starts to uncover secrets and lies. Or so she thinks. A fractured mind isn’t best equipped for solving a puzzle. Her husband tells her that he hasn’t been to the cabin in a long time…but a local man talks about seeing him just a few months back. That’s enough to set Meg’s alarm bells off. Why did he park somewhere he never does the night she was taken? Why didn’t he answer a ransom note she believes was sent? Was he at this cabin with his “cousin” Madelin? Who is Madelin? Is any of this really happening?
Trust is hard to come by when you’ve survived a horrifying ordeal. There are moments where Scott seems so hurt by accusations and so worried about his wife’s condition that it feels right. Moments follow that will have you jump to the opposite path. The unreliable mind of our protagonist makes every step feel right and wrong at the same time.
Things reach a boiling point when Meg becomes adamant that they leave the cabin and return home immediately. It imbues the story with an urgency that is has tiptoes around before that. Is the flat tire that prevents them from leaving a purposeful move meant to entrap her? Why are Madelin and Scott so close and so laid back about their predicament? How do we escape this situation? Is a confused Meg taking control of the action the most dangerous proposition of all?
Somewhere Quiet combines an interesting mystery with a creeping dread. That you can never be sure which direction that dread is creeping in from really makes the movie effective. The only thing that we know for sure is that we cannot trust anything. We have an unreliable narrator. And she’s looking to take an active role in the story.
Scare Value
The trauma is strong in Somewhere Quiet. Taken as a study of a final girl after her movie ends…it is wonderfully realized. Jennifer Kim gives a great lead performance. The narrative is filled with teased answers to several questions. What’s real? What happened? Where is this going? It puts you into the fractured mind of a survivor…and aims to confuse you as much as it does her.
3.5/5
Somewhere Quiet Links
Rent/Buy on VOD from Vudu and Amazon
