The Quiet (2005)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Menu Animation Featurette-Dissecting The Dissection, Locations: Shooting In Austin Featurette-Sans Celloid: The Quite And Digital Cinema Featurette-Script Development, The Cast Trailer-Art School Confidential, Capote, Running With Scissors Trailer-The Squid And The Whale
Rating
Year Of Production	2005
Running Time	92:40 (Case: 89)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (61:29)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Jamie Babbit
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Elisha Cuthbert Camilla Belle Martin Donovan Edie Falco Shawn Ashmore Katy Mixon David Gallagher
Case	?
RPI	$37.95	Music	Jeff Rona

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Polish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Italian Spanish Arabic Serbo-Croatian Hindi Polish Romanian Slovenian English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    A deaf mute named Dot (Camilla Belle) moves in with the family of her godfather (Martin Donovan) after her father passes away, her mother being long in the ground. Unfortunately for Dot, her new family are rather dysfunctional - and not in an entertaining way, a la The Simpsons. Her new mother Olivia (Edie Falco) is addicted to prescription medication and spends her life in a daze. Her godfather and his natural daughter Nina (Elisha Cuthbert) have an incestuous relationship that burns with a muddy mixture of love and hate.

    Nina is initially unhappy to have a new sister and treats Dot like an unwanted family pet. She becomes more hostile to Dot at school, where she is one of the most popular cheerleaders and doesn't want the stigma of being the girl with the weird deaf sister. Things start to change when Nina discovers that Dot may not be all she seems and she confides in Dot about her plan to murder her father. Meanwhile, Dot is falling for Connor (Shawn Ashmore), a boy at school who has also chosen to confide in her.

    The Quiet is a low-budget, shot on digital, indie thriller with an erotic twist. Don't take the "erotic thriller" tag to mean soft-core porn though, the erotic side is actually a legitimate a plot device (and an effective one at that) rather than an excuse to get a couple of hot teenagers naked. The plot is a little thin for the concept, but excellent performances from the whole cast coupled with good characterisations make up for most of the shortfall. High marks are also deserved for the production quality of this digital feature, which is well ahead of many similar digital features.

    The film is worth a look on a rainy afternoon, particularly for fans of any of the cast, but not worth purchasing without watching it beforehand.

Video

    The film is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is quite sharp, particularly for a low budget digitally-shot feature, however a reasonable amount of fine grain and low level noise is noticeable (as is common for digital features). There is a good amount of detail visible in darker areas and shadows. That said, many of the scenes set at night are a tad foggy and blue-tinted, which is most likely a limitation of the digital photography. Most scenes set at night are functional, but never look "quite right". The colours in the film are quite natural outside of the dark scenes (although those scenes do make up a significant portion of the film). Despite these minor issues, the film does look better than many independent features shot digitally or otherwise, and the DVD transfer is of a high standard.

    I suspect the transfer was completely digital, as there are no film artefacts to be seen. There are no noticeable MPEG compression-related artefacts.

    There are a wide range of subtitles available, including both English and English for the Hearing Impaired. The English subtitles are white with a grey border. The English for the Hearing Impaired Subtitles are white with a black strip behind the text, consequently they are functional but very ugly. From the section I sampled, the subtitles appear accurate and well timed.

    This is a RSDL disc. The layer change occurs mid-scene at 61:29 but was not noticeable on my equipment.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are five audio tracks provided for the feature, English and Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 at 448 Kbps, French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 at 384 Kbps and Polish Dolby Digital 2.0 at 192 Kbps.

    The dialogue is quite clear and in good sync throughout. There is not much in the way of a score, but a minimalist use of classical piano is put to reasonable effect.

    The surround channels get very little use, save for a handful of environment audio effects and voice pans. There is no particularly discernable surround channel use, save for a small amount of bottom end on some of the piano tracks. Given the low budget appearance of the film it is not surprising that the audio is quite basic and, thankfully, there isn't a lot of call for audio effects in the film. The audio is quite functional and nothing more.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Fetal Pig, Fetal Pig, Let Me In - Dissecting the Dissection Featurette (4:50)

    A brief featurette on a scene of the film that involves the characters dissecting fetal pigs in a science class. Unbeknownst to some of the actors, real fetal pigs were used with the aid of the science department of the school at which the film was shot.

Locations: Shooting in Austin Featurette

    A featurette on the advantages of shooting in Austin, Texas. Actually, a featurette about why not to shoot your low budget film in LA is more accurate. The featurette also goes into the general considerations that needed to be made when selecting locations, particularly when there isn't a budget to build sets.

Sans Celluloid: The Quiet and Digital Cinema Featurette (4:33)

    An brief, but interesting featurette about how HD video was used for the production. What is particularly interesting in this case is that the film uses HD to achieve a traditional narrative look, rather than the hand-held look that many HD features go for.

Script Development Featurette (9:32)

    A press-kit style featurette on the script development for the film. It covers the character-based approach to the story as well as how the initial script was developed during production to better suit what the film-makers were able to visually achieve.

The Cast Featurette (9:53)

    A featurette about how the characters were fitted to the actors playing them. Thankfully, this is a bit more than just the "they're so great" banter that many cast featurettes wind up as.

Trailers

    Trailers for Art School Confidential, Capote, The Covenant, Running With Scissors and The Squid and the Whale

    A near identical version is available in Region 1. The special features are identical, but the Region 4 contains an additional Polish Dolby Digital 2.0 language track and a wider variety of subtitles.

    A fair to middling low budget erotic thriller. The plot is thin, but the performances are good. Rent before you think about buying.

    There is a good range of genuinely interesting extras.

    The film was digitally shot and a number of minor digital video artefacts are noticeable, but for the most part it is a clean transfer. The audio is functional and nothing more.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall