The Quiet Room Review (Short Film, 2019) #31DaysofHorror

content warning: death by suicide, mental wellness, gore

Michael, a writer, is put on a 72 hour hold at a mental hospital after attempting death by suicide. He’s warned about the screams from the quiet room and the resident demon Hopeless Hattie. Hattie pushes men to death by suicide so she can be with them forever.

I first heard about “The Quiet Room” during its production. RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants Katya and Alaska both announced they had been cast in a short horror film. Some photos went around of their characters and it looked interesting. It’s just one of those titles that rattles around in my memory, something that may eventually be available to a wide audience.

“The Quiet Room” is a queer horror film about mental wellness problems. The characters in the film are dealing with depression, addiction, and a general sense of isolation and loneliness. The people willing to give them attention are not the people they want to get attention from. They’ve built a sense of community in the treatment facility, but no one seems to be making any actual progress towards being able to leave.

This is exemplified by the Hopeless Hattie character. She is relentless. She does not care about who you are attracted to. If she wants you, she will find a way to get you. She will take away everything and everyone in her way until she can force you to her domain. Then it is a matter of when, not if, she gets what she wants.

The monster as a metaphor for mental wellness problems is a recurring trope in horror for a strong reason. It helps a wider audience visualize what is going on. Conditions like depression and anxiety are abstract to a large amount of people. They can see the shift in emotion and some of the more extreme physical reactions, but they cannot really understand what it’s like to be in that mental state. But a monster that will track you down no matter what you do because you have depression or suicidal ideation? That can be seen. That can be understood. And, for horror, that can be feared.

Writer/director Sam Wineman crafts a tense and empathetic horror film about mental wellness. He makes each character more than their condition, which is far too rare in this style of horror narrative. There’s only so much you can do with character development in a 28 minute runtime and Wiseman does enough to make you care about what happens to everyone in the story.

“The Quiet Room” is streaming on Shudder.