For Halloween, we shared some terrifying true stories we feel deserve horror movie adaptations. But before you think you're caught up on disturbing real events, let me ask: have you ever heard of the unsettling experiments of the 1970s that aimed to manifest a poltergeist through torturing test subjects? Thought not.
In The Quiet Ones trailer above, you can get a sense of this twisted tale, which centers on the paranormal studies of Professor Joseph Coupland (Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows' Jared Harris), who believes that poltergeists and malicious entities are created from negative human energy. To prove his thesis, he invites a bunch of his students to join him in a locked down house to participate in a grim experiment, where he purposely pushed a young woman to the edge of sanity to see if it would spur paranormal activity. The good news is all this torment is causing bizarre and frightening events in the house that harbors them. The bad news is the evil they unleashed is nothing they are prepared to handle.
It's a strong premise for a horror movie, scripted by Tom de Ville (Urban Gothic), Oren Moverman (Rampart), Craig Rosenberg (The Uninvited), and John Pogue (Ghost Ship). Pogue also helms this feature, directing a cast that includes Snow White and the Huntsman's Sam Claflin, Bates Motel's Olivia Cooke, Being Human's Eric Richards, and Episodes's Laurie Calvert. Producing the creepy feature is Hammer Film Production, the horror studio that made a name for itself in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s with a slate of monster movies like The Revenge of Frankenstein and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb. The studio fell into a decline in the '80s and '90s, but resurrected its reputation as a premiere horror moviemaker in 2012 with the sleek thriller The Woman in Black
Making more than $127 million worldwide, The Woman in Black is the United Kingdom's highest-grossing horror film in two decades. So, The Quiet Ones has some big shoes it realistically won't fill. For one thing, it doesn't have British national treasure Daniel Radcliffe fronting it. But while fans await the Woman in Black sequel, The Woman in Black: Angel of Death, Hammer is offering what seems to be a dedicatedly spooky thriller.
A US release date for The Quiet Ones has not yet been revealed.
