Soft & Quiet (2022)

Smith’s Verdict: ***1/2
Reviewed by Tanner Smith

SPOILER WARNING! I don’t know how I can get through this review without revealing certain plot points that filmmaker Beth de Araujo most likely intended to keep quiet–out of respect, I’ll try to be subtle…but I can’t promise in succeeding.

They look like your typical average everyday sweet (and white) ladies–but try to get to know them a little more because they just might be hiding something…something very serious and evil despite their pleasant demeanor. They might just get together and have their own little meetings–but not for a book club.

Well, even if they did discuss their favorite literature, it’d set off many alarm bells to those outside of these meetings.

The first few minutes of the intriguing and effectively disturbing thriller “Soft & Quiet” set us up in a brilliantly deceptive fashion, as we meet a pleasant-looking elementary school teacher named Emily (Stefanie Estes). Emily is crying because of a home pregnancy test that turns out negative. Emily is accompanying one of her students as he waits for his mom after school. Emily tells the kid to stick up for himself, singling out the janitor whose mopping caused the kid to slip in the halls. Emily even lets the kid read an excerpt of a children’s book she’s writing. Emily seems great–and she’s on her way to some place with a foil-covered pie she made herself, to share with others at a meeting at a small local church.

Emily (and I’ll stop beginning sentences with “Emily”) meets with other seemingly well-adjusted women and presents her pie to share with them–and de Araujo stays on the homemade cherry pie as it is unwrapped to reveal that carved into the upper crust is…a swastika.

Yep, this is happening and it’s not a joke–it’s a meeting with a far-right women’s group called “Daughters of the Aryan Dynasty,” of which Emily is the leader. (Did I mention the school janitor Emily pointed the kid toward wasn’t white? The questionable look she gave upon passing them says something else now.) These white ladies sit in a circle and discuss what they hate about minorities, liberal agendas, BLM, and other things that irritate their shared bigotry. Just when you think you have an idea of who Emily is and who these people she’s meeting with are, the rug is pulled out from under us as we endure a terrifying 15-20 minute conversation about the things they cannot stand seeing in modern-day America–the things that are assisting people apart from themselves, they speak ill of, and in many different ways too. (Each member represents a type of white supremacy, like a legacy of the KKK and a racist boomer, among others.) They throw out racial, xenophobic, and homophobic slurs to each other like it’s no big deal. And it’s clear that Emily’s “children’s book” has a sinister agenda, revealing more about Emily than I’d like to know. (This woman is SCARY, the more layers are uncovered from her.)

And no, the church’s pastor is not welcoming of this group of monsters–in fact, when he gets Emily alone outside the room for a bit, his demands are clear: they all need to leave. Now. Like, right now.

We are 30 minutes into the film when Emily, hiding the confrontation from the others, adjourns the meeting early and invites everyone for a drink at her house. Well, great–now we can see what these terrible people are like in the real world they heavily criticized. I may foresee the very real possibility of them coming across that’s going to get them in a lot of trouble if they act the way they believe, but they do not, and so off we go. What follows is a truly disturbing portrait of neo-Nazi Karens putting themselves deeper and deeper into a horrid situation (that’s the turning point of the film) that doesn’t need to happen but they’ll let it happen because they are, to be frank, f***ing idiots who deserve every karmic thing she could possibly get coming to them.

As ecstatic as I would have been to actually see that karmic justice upon these awful human beings, I am thankful to see “Soft & Quiet” end on an ambiguous yet optimistic note that will all but assure us that nobody can get away with incidents like this. (And de Araujo, who wrote and directed, was inspired to make this film from the Central Park birdwatching incident–did that lady get away with that? NOPE.)

“Soft & Quiet” is set in real time, presenting an afternoon in the life of this horrible person that escalates into something that was definitely inevitable–the cinematographer, Greta Zozula (who also shot observant gems like “The Half of It” and “Never Goin’ Back”), stays with these people and shows us firsthand something more horrific and sadly real-world than your average horror film. (And even more impressive is its ability to look like one continuous shot, much like the Oscar-winning “Birdman” and Hitchcock’s “Rope.”)

The actors are so convincing that I may be terrified just watching another one of their performances–I may have to repeat the mantra, “They’re only actors,” to myself until I remember exactly that. That may sound like hyperbole, but that’s how credible and effective these actors are–not just Estes but also Olivia Luccardi as an overzealous punk radical and Jon Beavers as Emily’s pushover husband who is often the point of his own wife’s gay slurs. There’s also the aforementioned KKK-legacy who mentions her work in the neo-Nazi website stormfront: “The media loves to portray us as big scary monsters. Do I look that scary?”

Lady, you can look like the angel on top of a Christmas tree and I’ll still be terrified of you if you pull more stuff like this.