[Film Review] Somewhere Quiet (2023)

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn't exist.

After watching the psychological thriller Somewhere Quiet (2023), viewers will need hours (or days) to decompress. There are a handful of relatively peaceful moments, but tension, paranoia and horror persist throughout Olivia West Lloyd's incredible film from the opening shot to the closing one.

Meg Rhodes (Jennifer Kim) is a young woman who has recently returned home from being abducted and tortured by strangers. Her husband Scott Whitman (Kentucker Audley) seems to be a decent guy who is very solicitous of her at the start of the film. To escape from city life in Boston's tony Beacon Hill for a bit, they decamp to Scott's family compound on Cape Cod.

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Although Scott promised Meg that it would just be the two of them, his cousin Madelin (Marin Ireland) quickly shows up, telling them she's staying nearby and caring for her bedridden mother. Madelin blows into the movie like an off-season nor'easter, immediately disrupting the fragile peace between Meg and Scott. 

The closeness between the two cousins is unsettling; the two are extremely affectionate and flirtatious – they behave more like exes with lingering sexual tension than blood relatives. Meg senses it, and Madelin's obsessive focus on Scott further drives a wedge between the couple. But it would be too easy to blame the "other woman" (for lack of a better term) in this triangle. It is really Scott's behavior and treatment of Meg that becomes increasingly abhorrent and frightening.

Much of the violence in the film is kept off the screen, letting viewers imagine the worst – and the suggestions Lloyd plants are brilliantly subtle, especially when it comes to the history of the Whitman family. Meg was born in Seoul, then adopted and raised in the United States. Upon learning this, Madelin immediately speaks to Meg in Korean, which Meg does not know. Numerous microaggressions are directed toward Meg by both cousins in the film. After she comes across a black-and-white photo of Korean children in the Whitman family home, Scott admits that his great grandparents were missionaries in Korea. When Meg wants to discuss the repercussions of this, Scott immediately shuts her down. The camera skillfully shifts to show the distance – much larger than initially seen – between husband and wife in this scene.

A peek inside Whitman family history also gives Madelin, who is positioned as Meg's rival for Scott's love and attention, more depth. In a rare scene when the two women are alone together, Madelin reveals that she and her five-year-old brother were swimming at the family beach as children when her brother drowned. Madelin tells Meg, "For most of my childhood, I thought I dreamt the whole thing." The Whitmans didn't discuss the young boy's death, which had a troubling effect on both Madelin and Scott. Somewhere Quiet's unwillingness to treat either Madelin or Scott as total villains is part of what makes it so great – and scary. Can Meg trust them? 

This subtlety is also present when Meg describes her time in captivity. She is reluctant to discuss it much initially, then when she does want to open up about the details of her nightmarish ordeal, Scott once again refuses to let her talk about it. Bit by bit, the extent of Meg's PTSD is revealed through the film – and Scott's "thoughtful" gestures are seen as anything but. During an early scene, he encourages her to eat when she says she doesn't want to. What seems like a compassionate husband trying to tend to his wife becomes something entirely different once it is revealed that Meg's captors used food as a weapon to destroy her mind (and her body). 

Like most great horror films, Somewhere Quiet leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. Of the three main characters, no one is a particularly reliable narrator, even Meg, who is grappling with the effects of the violence and abuse she endured. The performances by the three leads are astounding. Kentucker Audley shrewdly walks the line between being a remorseful husband begging for forgiveness and a man that no one should trust; with her flashing eyes and expressive face, Marin Ireland brings a manic energy (and a hidden vulnerability) to Madelin; and Jennifer Kim as Meg is a marvel as a traumatized woman fighting to maintain her life and her sanity.

The eerie music, late autumn beach scenes, and feelings of paranoia and isolation in Somewhere Quiet leave the viewer echoing Madelin: Was the whole thing a dream? And if so, whose dream? 

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