I've watched about 15 or 20 movies since then but not a day has gone by where I haven't thought about this movie. And I haven't just had passing thoughts: I've dwelled on it and been distracted by it during other movies, having to snap myself out of the trance. So I watched it two more times.
This is a tremendous movie but part of its power comes from how deliberately suffocating it is. One critic correctly referred to it as "queasy," which...yeah, it's uncomfortable, that's the point. I appreciate how uneasy this movie is to swallow. In the tradition of someone like William Friedkin, director Beth de Araújo goes for it in terms of eventual violence and it's neither tasteless nor tasteful because this isn't a trashy Lifetime movie nor some palatable White Guilt movie - you either have the stomach for it, or you don't. The first time I watched it I certainly didn't and so I couldn't accurately gauge its pacing because the last 40•ish minutes I had to pause it and take breaks. There are frequent racial slurs, antisemitism, infuriating philosophizing, chilling cruelty, sexual assault, emotional and physical torture, and murder to contend with.
Soft & Quiet was picked up by Blumhouse, the biggest name in theatrical horror distribution, but it quietly dumped S&Q onto VOD, which stinks of corporate cowardice. I get that it's not easily marketable but TikTok word-of-mouth has done the marketing anyway. Again, I'm reminded of Friedkin, specifically how Disney, via Criterion, took the N-word out of The French Connection, which is more racist (and dangerous) than the actual use of the N-word. What they essentially did was more of the same shit that Ron DeSantis and other Anti-CRT chuds have been doing: sanitizing history. French Connection isn't a racist movie, it's a movie about a racist, but Disney committed a cover-up, absolving him by tampering with the evidence - which is the kind of shit that a racist cop would do. Blumhouse should have made more noise for this movie, especially since it's so fucking well-made (and a debut feature no less!!).
Not only was it filmed in four takes over four days, but each time they had to painstakingly plan out every shot, lighting change, and blocking while never losing momentum or sunlight. We follow them over three car rides and a boat trip all while the cinematographer, Greta Zozula, is lugging the camera on her shoulder and having to keep things visually fresh while racing the setting sun. There's this gorgeous shot late in the movie where a character stands in front of a window and the colors of the dusky cobalt blue sunset gradient in the background, with the interior orange light in the foreground, is incredibly striking. They either planned for that and executed it perfectly or they took advantage of it on the fly - either way it's remarkable. Shortly after there's a shot where two characters are engulfed by brake lights, so it's just this frightening blood-red flood in the frame.
I have written so much about how gimmicky and lame long takes are now but S&Q does it 1) for the sake of propulsive kinetic energy 2) without any noticeable digital stitching so 3) everything that unfolds is as naked and tense as possible. It serves a narrative and sensory purpose, it's not a masturbatory exercise in style. The home invasion and all the messy violence that spurts out is inescapable because it's never obscured by time-jumps or cushy surrealism via dream logic. The dialog drives everything in real-time and is so expertly woven in.
As everything falls apart and escalates, the way these characters talk to each other is nonstop development as resentments and interpersonal dynamics open like blisters and some oozing surprises dribble out. The breathless endurance of the performances is exhausting and engrossing, especially Olivia Luccardi's character Lesley (who echoes Fairuza Balk's character from American History X). She's a wildcard of cruelty, opportunism, and cunning manipulation who escalates everything until everyone is hysterically turning on each other (more on her later). Watching the chaos of in-fighting and sloppy ineptitude isn't funny by any means (comedy as a genre might as well be on the moon in this case) but there's a thick air of self-destructive pitifulness; these women aren't just hateful but pathetic and desperate, which makes them scarier. The real-time aspect isn't just about watching them commit their acts of barbarity but showing the cover-up mines a lot of tension too. Not just because, for them, it's the suspense of worrying they're not gonna get away with it. But, for us, it's hopelessly sickening watching them cover their tracks. It's almost like getting a glimpse into the potential night of Tamla Horsford's death, which isn't deliberate at all but it was on my mind for most of the final act.
The racist banter between these pie-baking wine-Mom Karens and yoga pants-clad Beckies strikes a perfect balance: It could easily be laid on too thick or downplayed to make them 'sympathetic,' but it's never didactic or sanitized. Even with that meticulous care for her script (built by extensive research, cultural osmosis, and traumatic life experience) people refuse to give de Araújo her flowers or, hell, her agency. I'll chalk it up to them being uninformed.
Most critiques of Soft & Quiet are dismissive and uncharitable: "Why was this made?" and/or "we don't need this, especially for people of color," over and over those sentiments kept popping up.
I'm gonna field the question as if it's not rhetorical, "Why was this made?" well, writer/Director Beth de Araújo said this scenario is her worst nightmare - thankfully she lived it through her art rather than in real life. Saying it offers nothing to people of color is nearsighted considering she's a woman of color (Chinese and Brazilian) who, in the wake of asian people being viciously attacked on the street, needed a creative outlet. The director herself is saying "this shit scares me" but her immersive art therapy is rejected as 'unnecessary'?
Let's put Soft & Quiet up against the polar opposite: Victor Salva, a director convicted for molesting young boys, made Jeepers Creepers 2, a horror movie about young boys who are left helpless at the mercy of a flying, unstoppable monster known as The Creeper. Said Creeper picks off all of the adults and then takes its time choosing young boys to victimize. It couldn't be more sickeningly obvious that this is wish-fulfillment. So we have two horror movies where one is made by someone terrified of her nightmares coming true and the other is made by someone whose wet dreams are nightmarish. And I make that juxtaposition because it's important to unpack authorship; the art is so integral to the specific artist making it. Ever since #MeToo the debate of 'separating the art from the artist' has been exhaustively unpacked but after reading reviews for Soft & Quiet a question no one has asked manifested: does that apply to victims' art as well...?
Look back a few years: The Handmaid's Tale, The Invisible Man, The Assistant, and Don't Worry Darling, all stories where white women have been centered when it comes to media about power dynamics and abuse. Don't Worry Darling is the bottom of the barrel for many reasons but mainly because its only woman of color is reduced to a plot device and sacrificial negro to propel our white heroine. It's a thankless role but it's just par for the course with White Feminist myopia. Handmaid's Tale is no better: it's hailed as this great Dystopian Feminist show but it just shows white women being treated like black women were during slavery. In fact, the white women are treated worse than the black women on the show, so it truly is science fiction. It's the closest they could get to roleplaying misogynoir without wearing actual Blackface.
I remember after the very first Women's March in 2017 there were scores of women of color talking about their experiences, about how they didn't feel included, that sentiments about Black Lives Matter or Human Rights Violations at the border were treated with contempt, among others. And the backlash was white women eschewing apologies in favor of saying "we don't need to talk about that," cuz they would rather One Size Fits All than unpack the uncomfortable intricacies of intersectionality. Same thing happened when Roe v. Wade was overturned: women of color wanted to talk about how they had much more difficult times getting the services they needed for abortions, but White Women shot them down with the same condescending "we're all in this together" bullshit. Their tone had the insulting "time-and-place" snark even though the time and place is a continuum.
I remember back during the George Floyd protests in 2020 there was a growing sentiment bolstered by CNN that "if we're going to reform police, we need to hire more women." It's a level of out-of-touch delusion that's downright staggering. Consider Officer Amber Guyger's home invasion and execution of Botham Jean. Not to mention Officer Lacy Browning responding to a mental wellness check leading to her pressing her foot into Mona Wang's neck, pulling her hair, and dragging her across the floor face-down. There are also the Karens who wield the police as their own personal attack dogs to intimidate people of color (or worse) for barbequing, bird-watching, dog-walking, or just... existing.
Representation is important and that goes for monsters, too, especially since, for some, portraying something cinematically is more legitimizing than what's on the news or social media.
Thankfully, Jordan Peele did that with Get Out, and it was specifically 102 years in the making.
D.W. Griffith's Ku Klux Klan propaganda film, BIRTH OF A NATION, shows a white damsel running from a monstrous black man (played by a white man in blackface) intent to harm her - the Klan show up and 'heroically' save her from this 'Black Devil.' That was 1915 and it kicked off a CENTURY of harmful imagery portraying black men as lustful, violent, white-women-obsessed animals. 102 years later, Get Out finally shows a black man's hands on a white woman's throat and it's not only 100% justified but it's a satisfying, stand-up-and-cheer moment.
Curiously, though: Chris stops. He looks scared... because this lady is SMILING.
As it starts to dawn on Rose that she's gonna die, she fucking smiles at Chris and it's an EVIL fucking grin. It's not explicitly spelled out _why_ she smiles but it can be interpreted so many ways. My guess is, from her warped, racist perspective, she's reveling in watching 'his true nature' come out. She's willing to die, out of spite, to 'prove' he's just like the Black Devil from Birth Of A Nation. OR she's imagining Chris going down for her 'murder' because she knows the courts won't believe his fantastical story about racial brain-swapping. Rose knows the marks on her neck will tell the story for her, regardless of the truth - even from the grave she can control the power dynamic. But soon after this, Peele plays with expectations and perspective when we see red and blue police lights. Usually this would mean rescue... in a white horror movie. Chris is logically terrified while Rose typically reaches out for help; she knows a cop will fall for her angelic sham. It's a great moment of tension because Peele makes Chris, and us, sit for an agonizing few seconds because he knows we're thinking about what the cops THINK they saw: a black man on top of a white woman with his hands on her neck - with no context whatsoever. Thankfully, this is a fake-out: it's Rod and he doesn't question Chris' actions once because he's not just Chris' friend, he knows exactly what he saw: self-defense. So in the case of Soft & Quiet, de Araújo centers white women for the very first time not as victims but as monsters, to challenge other media that never questioned white women's complicity in racism and the patriarchy. It's a whole eat•pray•love Book Club of Roses.
Female White Supremacists are usually balanced out by white female allies (for every racist Bryce Dallas Howard in The Help, there's an Emma Stone to the rescue, her saintly actions silently saying Not All White Women). There's one woman who initially dissents but the other women gently harp on her racial biases and nurture them, after some alcohol and comfort in solidarity it's not long before she hurtles toward full-on hatred.
There are few male characters but they're included in really subversive ways. The most innocent one being a little boy, no older than 10. He's alone, waiting for his Mom to pick him up from school. Emily, his teacher and the movie's ringleader, is shown early on in despair that she can't have kids, so she takes advantage of the fact that he's alone and lightly grooms him. She instructs him to publicly insult a Latina custodian, shows him a swastika in a pie she's been holding, and tells him about a children's book she's writing (we never see what's in the book but it's not hard to imagine). It's stomach-churning shit.
There's another moment where the Ladies' first meeting is cut short by a Preacher at the church they've gathered at. He'd heard some of their hateful dreck and doesn't mince words about kicking them out. Emily initially balks in defiance so he deepens his tone and pushes back - she begrudgingly gives in. He made her feel powerless and, coming off the dopamine rushes of grooming her student and indoctrinating the more sheepish woman in her meeting, she hones in on her next target: her husband.
This is where Emily's character really comes to life, in the worst ways. They're all gearing up to commit a hate crime but he tries to sober them up. And I'm not gonna give him too much credit: he's hesitant purely for the sake of self-preservation. He's just as much a bigot as they are but his vision isn't as clouded as theirs in this moment so he tries to tell them what obvious repercussions are on the horizon. Emily is insulted and disgusted, because he's not willing to participate that somehow makes him "weak". So she uses toxic masculinity to bend him to her will; venomously emasculating him, calling him a "Faggot," and the other women join in with utterances of "man up." He gives in and helps them but he never loses that foresight, even with simmering resentment and panic practically glowing under his skin. The most telling moment is, after they've gotten to the house, they're hiding because their victims come home early. He starts to panic and berate her so Emily viciously slaps him and even denies him his need to cry. Almost like a jumpscare he starts to slap himself over and over, taking out the anger he feels toward her on himself, it's not just startling in the moment but we can glean so much of their history from these few scenes.
Like, maybe she projects onto him her inability to get pregnant and so it manifests into outright abuse, nitpicking any sign of weakness as confirmation bias, and using that to cut him down and mold him. He's certainly susceptible if the right buttons are pushed but he's also not stupid so he fucks off from the narrative altogether. Emily is left to fend for herself and Lesley is the one to take advantage and extort her. From then on Emily does everything that Lesley barks at her and is brought back to the despair from earlier.
So much is said on the whole about indoctrination, power dynamics, racism, toxic masculinity, gender politics, and entitlement. Unlike most one-dimensional racist characters who are usually deprived of characterization through subtractive cliches and stereotypes, our hateful leads are layered and compelling without being sympathetic. Not once does it ever half-heartedly preach about racism nor absolve its racists by having them learn some contrived lesson(s). It also doesn't give us any immediate satisfaction in seeing them punished, either. One of the top reviews on Letterboxd complains that we never see them die after all that they've done; Inglourious Basterds this is not.
Comeuppance and redemption arcs are both barred at the door because racism isn't solved easily.
So, do we "need this"? Well, I can't speak to what anyone else needs but I'll say that, as a culture, we've never been shown a movie like this. So I'll ask: If we don't need this, what's the alternative? Most media that 'challenges' Neo Nazis are usually pretty fucking toothless (Jojo Rabbit) vehicles for self-congratulations. Soft & Quiet has teeth but self-righteous neoliberals don't like being confronted with ideology that makes them uncomfortable. Instead, they opt for being spoonfed reassurances that they're good people and mock individuals rather than understand them, especially when confronted with a mirror like this that isn't designed for virtue signaling sentiment, rather the notion that they're the real villains deep down.
I hate Misery Porn just as much as the next person but this is a tour of an artist's anxieties, a cinematic coping mechanism, not tragedy-as-cheap-spectacle. If you don't like it based on technical aspects or if it makes you uncomfortable---for whatever reasons---fine, critique it, but don't call into question its 'merit' for existing. If a filmmaker uses their art to heal, more power to them, and [SPOILERS] based on the ending I'm confident that She needed this.
"In order to empathize with someone’s experience you must be willing to believe them as they see it and not how you imagine their experience to be." – Brené Brown
