SOMEWHERE QUIET

Meg (Jennifer Kim) is trying to readjust to normal life after recently being involved in a heinous abduction. To recenter herself, she takes a trip to the woods by the coast in Cape Cod with her husband Scott (Kentucker Audley) to stay at his wealthy family’s countryside compound. An excursion like this offers the kind of peace that Meg deserves to regain her sense of normalcy — but those plans get swiftly disrupted when Scott’s upper-class cousin Madeline (Marin Ireland) arrives unannounced. Madeline’s insertion into their activities causes Meg’s recent traumatic memories to resurface through eerie hallucinations and nightmares. While Scott tries to attend to the emotionally fraught Meg, she begins to clash with Madeline’s aristocratic personality. The conflict brings out passive-aggressive behavior that makes Meg question her sanity while also coming to terms with the truth behind her kidnapping.

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Cousin Madeline comes to overbearing life through the performance of Marin Ireland. Her aggressive affection and territorial nature toward Scott are off-putting and flawless. You cannot look away from her. Kentucker Audley is Meg’s husband, Scott. What seems like well-intended advice comes off as pretentious and dismissive at times. His white male gaze is spectacularly upsetting and just as sinister as Ireland’s.

Jennifer Kim plays Meg with frayed nerves and pent-up trauma on every inch of her skin. She lives inside the mind of someone who survived unspeakable horror. But, her feisty spirit and take-no-shit attitude barrel this unrelentingly intense story onward. Kim owns every second of screen time.

The hyper-augmented sound editing is brilliant. Alongside the booming cello-heavy score, the two aspects send chills down your spine. The flashes of deep seeded trauma are startling. You suddenly find yourself questioning your sanity. Every bit of this script feels like a slowly tightening vice on the nerves as the lines of reality blur easily.

In her feature directorial debut, filmmaker Olivia West Lloyd has a stranglehold on viewers. SOMEWHERE QUIET is a skillfully crafted and heinous tale of terror that will have you on the edge of your seat.