An ambitious and sorely overlooked real-time horror makes the most of its minutes on streaming

In the wrong hands, shooting and editing a movie or TV show to feel like it’s happening in real-time can come across as little more than a gimmick utilized to paper over the cracks in the hopes nobody will notice. Of course, there are many exceptions to the rule, and last year’s nail-biting terror Soft & Quiet comfortably fits the bill.

Written and directed by Beth de Araújo, the 92-minute slow-burning thriller flew almost completely under the radar, but despite shooting in one continuous take over the space of four days that began filming at exactly the same time in order to maintain continuity, the technical wizardry on display is more than complemented by a riveting story.

An elementary school teacher spends her afternoon organizing a mixer of sorts for like-minded women, but once the get-together concludes and she heads off on her way home, Stefanie Estes’ Emily encounters a figure from her past that leads to an incendiary chain of events unfolding in rapid succession.

Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 86 percent score, Soft & Quiet takes an intriguing premise and deftly blends it with impeccable execution, and the end result is a terrorizing tale with no shortage of social parables that’s capable of leaving viewers in a cold sweat based on the merest suggestion of what’s bubbling right underneath the service.

Having secured a Top 10 spot in multiple countries around the world on the iTunes worldwide charts – per FlixPatrol – we could be in the midst of freshly-renewed appreciation for a nightmare scenario that ended up being lost in the shuffle last year after 2022 conspired to deliver one of horror’s best 12 months in recent memory.