Somewhere Quiet is Your Next Favorite Film

Somewhere Quiet is Your Next Favorite Film. Yes, yes, I am trying to convince you to watch the movie so that you can help me figure out what the heck happened in this movie!! Hahaha. Because I need help! I think I might have it. But would love to hear from you all – well… all of you that have watched it anyway – in order to let me know if I’m on target or not.

Somewhere Quiet is a really confusing film about a woman who had recently been abducted. And it’s a movie that is all about the chaos psychologically that comes as a result of having your world turned upside down, and as you try and figure out what is really going on in the world afterwards. I think.

Spoilers abound from here on out – so if you haven’t watched the movie, please take a hard pass, watch it, and then come back for the discussion. Thanks for that.

Somewhere Quiet Chronological Movie Walkthrough

Let’s get to this one, shall we? I’m going to attempt to do all the heavy lifting up front and give you a chronological timeline for this movie. The ending is easy peasy – but that middle bit? It’s insane. Why? Well, because our narrator is the definition of unreliable.

1. Meg (Jennifer Kim – We Need to Talk About Kevin) is abducted.
2. While gone, the perpetrators send proof of life videos home.
3. But Scott (Kentucker Audley – V/H/S) has retreated to his family estate in the woods with his cousin Madelin (Marin Ireland – Eileen).
4. Scott believes that his wife is dead, and has an “affair” with Madelin.
5. While taken, Meg has food that is poisoned, and is abused horribly.
6. Eventually Scott discovers the proof of life video, and waits another month for the next video to come.
7. The authorities believe that Scott is the number one suspect in his wife’s disappearance.
8. Eventually, Meg is released, and comes back home, but not before she is psychologically ruined from the ordeal.
9. Meg and her husband Scott leave for the country to try and get away.
10. Meg witnesses Scott sleepwalking, but she can’t tell if that is her dreaming because broken plates go missing, etc.
11. “Coincidentally,” while there, Madelin shows up at the house as well.
12. There is something off about how Scott and Madelin are getting on.
13. But Meg is seeing things in the woods, specifically, Scott and Madelin’s grandmother, walking in the woods, and appearing in the house.
14. Fed up with how Scott and Madelin are acting one evening, she takes a motorcycle and flees.
15. Seeing visions of the grandmother, Meg hits Minnow – Madelin’s dog – and kills it.
16. The next morning, Meg tells Madelin to get out, and tells Scott she’s leaving.
17. The car has a flat, and they are stuck for another day.
18. Freaked out by another vision of grandma, she has a bath and journals.
19. But when her journal goes missing, she hunts for it, and finds a proof of life video from when she was abducted.
20. Running into the woods, she sees that Madelin is looking for Minnow.
21. Meg goes into Madelin’s home and discovers a power of attorney for Scott over Meg and medical records proving the need.
22. Madelin finds Meg in the house and, with a shotgun, tells Meg to help her find her dog.
23. Meg takes her to the dead dog and the duo fight.
24. Meg knocks Madelin out – and ties her up in the basement.
25. Meg has a vision of Madelin trying to convince her to commit suicide.
26. Scott arrives and tells Meg he grieved for her after she was abducted.
27. Meg accuses Scott of enjoying the widower’s attention, specifically from Madelin.
28. Scott points the shotgun at Meg and pulls the trigger.
29. They fight, and Scott is strangling Meg, when she pulls a box cutter and stabs her husband.
30. Meg gets the shotgun and says she wants to leave.
31. Scott jumps Meg, and she shoots him. She falls and hits her head.
32. When she wakes, she heads out to the road, and steals a truck from a passing driver, and takes off.

I think I have that timeline generally sorted. The most difficult part is that you sort of have to piece together points 1 – 8 from little shards of narrative shrapnel left strewn about the movie willy-nilly.

The Narrative Unknown Complexities

Here’s the glitch with this definitive sounding timeline that I have listed out above. Meg is our narrator and she is completely and totally unreliable. As far as we know? She still in captivity at point 1 in the timeline and just having delusional and traumatic tremors. We watch as she thinks Scott is sleepwalking. But isn’t. And yet, an argument could be made that while it could be that Meg is unreliable there is another option here for what could be going on. What if we add a number zero item to the list that went something like this:

0. Scott pays someone to have Meg abducted…

We do know that Scott is fed up with Meg. The opening scene we watch as Scott gets disproportionately upset about how she is trying to stack the luggage in the trunk. And if Scott is done with her shenanigans, and he is pushing to get power of attorney over her, then it could be that Scott is gaslighting her throughout the film. Maybe they are wheeling out the grandmother at regular intervals. Maybe the broken plate was cleaned up just to make her think she was sleepwalking when in fact she was wide awake.

Personal Thoughts on Somewhere Quiet

I was intrigued from the opening scream (which was brilliantly editing and screen-played by the way, perfect setup) to the loop back to where we started the film. I couldn’t really wrap my brain around why we were never seeing the “most interesting” bits of this narrative story… the abduction. The whole of the movie was affected by this reality, but we only learn about it in the abstract. “Let’s talk about the videos.” eh? Yes, please, let’s do, because – what are you talking about? (Well, the abductors were probably ransoming Meg for money from Scott and their old money family. Right? That adds up. Or that is what he’d like us to think what is happening anyway.)

I was a little confused about the race card that was played by Meg, or caused to be played by Scott… either way. There is a back story about missionaries and Scott’s apparent Korean predilections. I don’t know. That whole slice of things really seemed bolted on and irrelevant to the story of trauma, PTSD, recovery, and stress induced hallucinations. But what do I know?

I enjoyed it overall. The acting was sound. The editing was brilliant. It definitely was a ‘do more with less’ sort of film that I am all about. Give me three actors. A good location. And a brilliant script and I am 100% game. I’m in. Anyway, if you get a chance to check out Somewhere Quiet, I definitely recommend you give it a chance. I quite enjoyed the complications of trying to figure out the backstory here, and the details of what might actually be going on. And the narrator’s unreliability only added to the enjoyment of it all.

Edited by: CY