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LMN’s newest ‘Deadly Resolutions’ movie may be really difficult for you to find as it seems that the title may have been changed at the last minute, with some cable/streaming services listing the movie under its actual title, Body of Influence (which is displayed at the end of the credits), while others had it listed as the broadcast title, Don’t Trust the Quiet Ones — which makes no sense at all in relation to the story (unless it was designed to make us believe the young character Bea is the prime suspect). Not sure why the title was changed (except that the original title may have been contested by the cpyright holders of 1993’s Body of Influence), but this is a pretty decent thriller.
Don’t Trust the Quiet Ones begins with its focus on young Bea Black (Maya Misaljevic), a shy girl who is bullied at school but finds comfort watching influencer Izzy (Kaylin Woolley) doing her makeup tutorials to her ‘superstar’ fans. Bea is completely enthralled with Izzy — who is actually from her Pennsylvania home town — and when the influencer is making an appearance at a local mall, Bea’s mom Jodie (Sasha Barry) makes sure they get there, helping Bea perfect her own makeup so that when she talks to Izzy, she will be able to tell her how much she’s helped Bea get through life. While waiting in line they don’t seem to notice a young man approaching Izzy. He apparently knows her from their school days, but Izzy treats him more like a stalker and security drags him away. Jodie also notices a suspicious man sneaking into a corridor but doesn’t think much of it, although when taking a picture of Bea and her friend, she does get the man in the picture. Rattled by the encounter, Izzy excuses herself for a minute, and when walking past Bea the girl tries to talk to her and Izzy tells her to just focus on her and say what she wants to say, but Bea freezes and Izzy has to go. Not long after, security tells the crowd the rest of the event has been cancelled but no one — except the viewers — knows why: Izzy was murdered, and we have two suspects — the sketchy man and the stalker boy.
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Meanwhile, Bea is scheduled to spend the weekend with her dad — which she is not thrilled to do since he mostly works or watches soccer games while she’s there (to be fair, when she was younger they did enjoy kicking the ball around) — but it’s important that she spends time with him now before they move to Vermont (or as dad Matt proclaims, ‘across the country’, though they clearly live in Pennsylvania according to all the license plates) so Bea can attend a school to study her passion, photography. (I have many questions about how Bea got into this prestigious school based on the Polaroids she takes.) But Matt isn’t thrilled that his ex has made this decision without consulting him and will do what he can to convince them to stay. When they arrive at Matt’s, Jodie discovers Matt’s girlfriend Eve (Jess Brown) and her son Gil (Colby Frost) are also staying at the house while repairs are being made to their own house. It’s a bit awkward but Jodie handles it well, and then she literally bumps into Gil, knocking a book out of his hands. Gil is the boy from the meet and greet, and Jodie sees photos of Izzy in the book, which he quickly picks up and tries to hide. Later Gil tries to make small talk with Bea, and he finally gets her attention when he tells her he knows Izzy. They have a bit of a bonding moment, and later when Bea is in her room she hears Gil sobbing loudly in his room. She goes to check on him and he tells her that Izzy is dead. Matt brings Bea back home to her mom and tells Jodie the news, and she does what she can to console Bea. The next day or so, Bea wants to attend a vigil for Izzy with her friends but Jodie really doesn’t want her out since that creepy guy may be a suspect (which she had reported to the police). But Bea makes a prison escape by tying bedsheets together to climb out the window, and while at the vigil she sees the man lurking around. Back at home, someone wearing the LMN Black Hoodie breaks into the house but Jodie manages to fight them off (that person previously smashed the security camera above the front door with a baseball bat), tearing a patch off of their backpack, but Jodie has no idea where Bea is. While she is talking to the police, Bea shows up and tells her she saw the creepy man at the vigil so it could not have been him at the house. Bea discovers her laptop and book of photos (including the ones with creepy guy) are the only things missing from her ransacked room, so to be safe they shack up at Matt’s house with Eve and Gil still there. Are we heading into Secret Lives of Sister Wives territory? Bea is determined to go all Jessica Fletcher to solve Izzy’s murder, and Jodie discovers something disturbing while getting sheets out of the closet in the room Gil is occupying (while he’s out ‘studying’) — a shrine to Izzy. That can’t be good. Things begin to add up that Gil has been up to a lot, and when the police tell Jodie they found that patch from the backpack on the floor, it seems to cement Gil’s guilt, leading to his arrest. Eve is distraught that Matt, who is a criminal lawyer, won’t help as he seems to have chosen Jodie and Bea over her and Gil, so she storms out. To be safe, Matt suggests the three of them head up north to their cabin in the woods, just like old times. Matt even brings up how good it is that they are back here as a family, bonding over some chili Jodie made with just tomatoes and two cans of kidney beans Matt found in the cupboard (not sure where the tomatoes came from), but Jodie makes it clear they are nothing but co-parents. Later there is a loud banging on the door. Jodie and Bea hear a scuffle and find Matt badly injured, claiming Gil showed up and stabbed him with the fireplace poker he was using to defend himself. Jodie insists on going for help the next morning, but the tire on the car has been flattened so she has to walk five miles into town. She is nearly run over by a Jeep flying up the road, and in town she encounters Eve, who tells her Gil is missing and that his alibi for the night Jodie was attacked in her home checked out. Now they must work together to get to the bottom of things and protect their children. Jodie is even more confused when they get back to the cabin and sees the Jeep parked there. Who does it belong to, where is Gil, is Matt still alive and is Bea safe?
I still don’t understand the title of this movie, but Don’t Trust the Quiet Ones is actually a pretty solid thriller even though it may fudge some of its details to misdirect us away from the person (or people) behind everything from Izzy’s murder to the break-in at Jodie’s and the attack on Matt at the cabin. Everything is constructed in such a way by writers Thomas Ambrosini and Zoe Swann to really keep us on our toes, never allowing any of the characters to behave in a way so obvious that we immediately know they are responsible. It took a good while before I finally thought [redacted] was responsible, and I was actually surprised that I was right because it never really seems like that character could have done these things (and they weren’t working alone). Director Roxanne Boisvert does a really nice job of building suspense, using the cross-cutting of the break-in at Jodie’s with the vigil for Izzy especially well, leaving us to ponder who was in that Black Hoodie (this is also where there seems to be a real bit of misdirection because it doesn’t appear that whoever is in the hoodie has the same build as the person it’s supposed to be, so when the identity is revealed we have to call out the shenanigans … but I could be wrong). The whole climactic scene at the cabin also has a bit too much of throwing everything at us all at once to explain what happened since Izzy’s murder that it gets a bit confusing, but there is one really gasp-worthy, jaw-dropping moment when Eve comes in and tries to save the day. It gets just a tad absurd when the police arrive — silently — at just the right moment, riding in like the cavalry to take the suspects into custody, but overall this is a pretty decent movie (although Pennsylvania to Vermont is still not ‘across the country’, and would Matt’s employer actually give out the address to the cabin to a stranger?).
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Sasha Barry gives a nice performance as Jodie, the mother who is putting her daughter’s best interest ahead of anything else, despite Matt’s objections. She handles herself very well in the fight scenes too, giving as good as she gets with the intruder at her house. She really does a very good job at juggling all of the emotions and situations thrown at her, from Bea’s episode of rebellion to having to shut down Matt’s feeling that they could make this all work again if she doesn’t move to Vermont. Maya Misaljevic is also really good as Bea, her character growing from the insecure girl to one a bit more mature and open, determined to learn the truth about the person she idolized. There is even a moment where she is the only person between her family and the police who doesn’t think Gil is guilty of anything, a nice turn of events considering how she cold-shouldered him at the beginning.
Dennis Andres is also excellent as Matt. He does a great job of controlling Matt’s emotions, reining them in when he learns Jodie has made the decision to move without consulting him (even though they are apparently in a custody battle), trying to balance his relationships with Jodie and Eve, but wearing his heart on his sleeve once they are together at the cabin like old times. Matt has a lot of layers, and Andres does a great job of portraying them all very believably. Colby Frost does a nice job as Gil, really coming off as a complete stalker at the meet and greet with Izzy, trying to bond with Bea, and never playing the character as anything but innocent of all everyone believes he’s guilty of … which makes him the perfect suspect. He just plays Gil completely normal, but gives us just enough to suspect him of some bad behavior while still questioning his guilt. Jess Brown is also very good as Eve, having to deal with the awkwardness of meeting Jodie for the first time, but really trying to build a relationship, giving Jodie some crucial information about the baseball bat used to smash her security camera, willing to just walk away from Matt when he shows her and Gil zero support, while still willing to work with Jodie for their common cause. It really is a wonderful cast of actors taking the story seriously, never over-playing their roles, keeping some of the more outrageous moments believable, making this one of the better LMN thrillers out there. It may get convoluted at times, especially at the end as one character has to deliver a lot of expository dialogue to explain exactly what happened between the murder and the attack at the cabin, but if you come across it sometime — as long as you can find the right title — it’s worth a watch.
Don’t Trust the Quiet Ones has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.