Beth de Araújo's directorial debut, Soft & Quiet (2022), is one of the most intense gut punches to be unleashed on a general audience in recent memory. Playing out in one unbroken take, the film follows a group of white supremacist women who gather for a meeting where they discuss the usual white identity grievances and hackneyed racist chestnuts. The meeting, which resembles that of a church picnic committee, is replete with action points scribbled on a whiteboard and a freshly baked pie emblazoned with a swastika.
As the meeting ends, a few of these Betty Crocker nazis decide to keep the fun going by moving the festivities to the home of the group’s organizer, a kindergarten teacher, Emily (Stefanie Estes). En route, they stop to pick up a bottle of wine and encounter two mixed race Asian American women. What follows is a series of escalating horrors that could be described as a comedy of errors if it wasn’t so disgusting.
The “one take” approach seems uniquely suited to the thriller, the genre under which Soft & Quiet is being marketed. The unbroken flow of events in real time charges what we see with an inherent tension (preceded perhaps most famously by Hitchcock’s Rope, 1948). There is a voyeuristic perversity to this particular formal choice, but in this case, dread overrides excitement.
What some might laugh off as fringe activity can quickly turn deadly serious, and with this in mind, the choice to have the film turn from racist talk to tragic violence without any cuts becomes particularly meaningful. While another Blumhouse release, Get Out (2017), used a more familiar horror-film format to present its ideas, Soft & Quiet dispenses with the escapist comfort these tropes provide, instead placing the viewer solely in the company of the villains. What one experiences while watching de Araújo's film is real-world horror of the highest order, as the mundane trading of white supremacist ideas becomes brutality and terrorism before our eyes.
The script is by turns nuanced and blunt, the characters and performances are rich, and for the most part, the film is a convincingly stark slice of modern horror that serves as a useful warning against tolerating white supremacist organizing. Perhaps more than most films, though, it’s up to the viewer to decide if this ride in the nazi mom minivan is one they’re willing to take.
Soft & Quiet screens tonight, November 29, at Nitehawk Williamsburg. Director Beth de Araújo, cinematographer Greta Zozula, and cast members Olivia Luccardi and Eleanore Pienta will be in attendance for a Q&A.
