Ambiguity in horror and film is a favorite of mine. Spoon-feeding the audience is a copout. When a filmmaker lets the audience make their own connections and thoughts about a film, it could mean a few things. Firstly, the filmmaker fully comprehends the story they are telling and trusts that the information provided to the audience is enough to make up their own mind. Secondly, it could mean a filmmaker wasn’t sure which ending they wanted, so they let the audience decide their own ending. Thirdly, it could easily mean the writer had no clue what story they wanted to tell and left it up to the director to put something together. Each example can be fun and can have its merit. Somewhere Quiet can’t make up its mind as to what it wants to be.
Somewhere Quiet: A Confusing Blend of Ideas
Somewhere Quiet falls into the spectrum of throwing too many ideas at the wall, hoping one of them sticks. Unfortunately, nothing does stick. The bones of this story work well. Meg (Jennifer Kim), who is the lead and doesn’t have top billing, escapes kidnappers and tries to reacclimate back into everyday life. Her husband, Scott (Kentucker Audley), decides for the Christmas season he and Meg will go to his family’s land; a place secluded deep within acres of forest. When Scott’s cousin Madelin (Marin Ireland) pops up, things start to get…strange. Meg’s PTSD from the kidnapping rears its ugly head in full force as she is forced to question Scott’s relationship with his kin.
Visually, Somewhere Quiet is a competent film. Writer/director Olivia West Lloyd has no issues there. This is one of those films where the audience is gaslit into questioning what they are seeing. And that’s where the problem lies. Lloyd makes the audience question Meg’s experiences with her kidnappers by trying to retcon the question of whether she is an unreliable narrator. However you choose to decipher the finale is up to you, but going off of the information provided by Lloyd, it feels a bit…off. To boot, the character of Joe (Micheál Neeson) is a complete nothing character-wise. Acting-wise there are no qualms with Neeson’s performance, but his character feels jammed into the story to try and create more thrills that have zero payoff.
A Frustrating Lack of Closure
If anything, Somewhere Quiet is an exercise in patience. By the film’s end, I was left wondering if Meg was projecting. Are these events real? Does it matter? When the credits rolled, not only did I not care anymore, but I felt myself looking at this film in a way where I felt like I was victim blaming. And I felt gross. The film has a supernatural element that goes nowhere and does nothing to progress the story. Ultimately, it seems like Olivia West Lloyd had good intentions with Somewhere Quiet, but the final product is too messy and falls flat.