Common Sense Media Review
By Brian Costello
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Extremely powerful, disturbing, and violent horror tale.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 17+?
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Soft & Quiet
What's the Story?
In SOFT & QUIET, Emily (Stefanie Estes) is a small-town kindergarten teacher on her way to a first meeting in a church conference room with other like-minded ladies in the community. The six women have gathered to start what they have named the "Daughters for Aryan Unity." As they address their resentments and grievances, they also plan ways to get their message out to the community before the pastor, upon overhearing what they're about, asks them to leave. Undeterred, Emily invites the ladies to her house for wine. While stopping at the store owned by group member Kim (Dana Millican), two Asian American women, Lily and Anne, enter the store to also buy wine, leading to an ugly altercation involving racial slurs, verbal and physical bullying, and Kim pulling a gun on the two women. As the two Asian American women leave, one of them speaks disparagingly of Emily's brother, who is in prison after being found guilty of rape. Incensed, Emily decides that she and the other White women must get even with Emily and Anne. What begins as a home invasion quickly escalates into increasingly uglier and more disturbing violence against Emily and Anne, as the White women egg each other on to commit increasingly horrific acts.
Is It Any Good?
This film offers powerful commentary on how racist White women can come across as "pillars of the community" and hate as intensely as more obvious hate groups. Soft & Quiet is filmed in a one-take "real time" style, and this choice makes it impossible for the viewer to do anything but confront the racism and ugly behavior of these women and how expressions of resentment and grievance can quickly lead to microaggressions, bullying, and disturbing violence.
It's not a movie one will easily forget. It's a drama-horror that reminds us that the people who seem like the most ordinary of citizens can be as horrific as hockey mask-wearing axe murderers, if not more so. While there's the lingering feeling that the intensity and extremes of the acts in the story result in preaching to the choir instead of reaching the very people who need to listen to the overall point of the movie, there's no question that this is an extraordinary and fearless directorial debut from Beth de Araújo, and one of the better socially-conscious horror movies to come out of the Blumhouse filmography.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the messages of Soft & Quiet. How does the movie use horror movie conventions to address racism, particularly from White women?
Why do you think the movie was shot in one-take "real time?" How did that heighten the drama, suspense, and overall intensity?
Were the violence and slurs necessary for the story, or was it too much? What may have been lost had the movie been less violent and the language sanitized?
Movie Details
- On DVD or streaming : May 1, 2023
- Cast : Stefanie Estes , Olivia Luccardi , Dana Millican
- Director : Beth de Araújo
- Inclusion Information : Latino Movie Director(s) , Female Movie Actor(s)
- Studio : Blumhouse Productions
- Genre : Horror
- Run time : 91 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- MPAA explanation : Disturbing racial violence including rape and pervasive language including offensive slurs.
- Last updated : May 8, 2023
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