Aahana Swrup
Directed by Beth de Araújo, ‘Soft & Quiet’ is a horror thriller film that plays out in real-time. The film features Stefanie Estes, Olivia Luccardi, and Melissa Paulo, among others, and delves into the unsettling mindset of violent bigots. It follows kindergarten teacher Emily and her white supremacist friends, who all share deep-seated hatred of numerous minority groups. When a chance encounter with Anne, an Asian-American woman, reminds Emily of her past, the friend group’s bigotry rears its dark and violent head.
This film aims to serve as a social commentary on troubling ideologies and violent racism by employing bigots as the source of unnerving horror. If you’re curious about how things play out for the people involved in this story, here is everything you need to know about the ending of ‘Soft & Quiet.’ SPOILERS AHEAD!
Soft & Quiet Plot Synopsis
The film opens with Emily frantically taking a pregnancy test in the school bathroom. When the test returns negative, it devastates Emily, but she leaves for a meeting she has planned for some of her friends. Alongside being a kindergarten teacher, Emily is also the host of a Nazi organization group, “Daughters For Aryan Unity,” attended by like-minded white supremacist women like herself. During one such private meeting at a church, the group welcomes new recruit Leslie into the mix. As the meeting progresses, the women present personal grievances against minority communities and affirm their contempt towards the feminist and Black Lives Matter movements.
The women seem to have it out for everyone, from Jewish people to the LGBTQ+ community. One of the members openly admits to being a KKK legacy member active on a neo-nazi online forum, Stormfront. The church priest stumbles into their meeting and asks Emily to leave the premise due to his discomfort with such blatant bigotry and hatred.
As Emily wraps up the meeting, she invites the members to hang out with her. Leslie, Kim, and Marjorie take her up on the offer, and the four women drive to Kim’s store for some wine. While they’re shopping, two Asian-American customers walk into the store. The group is still high on the racial superiority boost from the meeting and instantly starts harassing the two women, Anne and Lily. While Lily fights back against their racist comments, Emily goads Anne into buying the most expensive wine in the store.
As it becomes clear that Emily has a history with the sisters, the situation escalates into violence when Kim pulls her gun out and forces Anne and Lily out of the store. While leaving, Lily retaliates with a comment about Emily’s brother, Jeff, who is currently in prison because of rape charges. In the aftermath of their exit, Emily’s husband, Craig, arrives and tries to calm Emily down. However, when Emily reveals that Lily reported Jeff to the police, the rest of her friends encourage her to take revenge on the sisters.
Leslie gleefully proposes the idea of breaking into their house and destroying their property and passports. Craig tries to stop the women from going through with their plan, but Emily compels him to tag along. The group drives up a hill to Anne and Lily’s house and breaks into their property. As they continue to snoop around the house, Anne and Lily unexpectedly show up. However, before the group can leave, Anne enters the house. As a result, they restrain Anne to a chair and duct tape her mouth shut.
Craig tries to leave but runs into Lily right outside the house. Eventually, the situation escalates to a home invasion, with both sisters tied and held at gunpoint by Emily and her friends. Craig realizes the weight of the situation and flees when it becomes obvious the women are too power-drunk and hate-ridden to leave Anne and Lily alone.
Soft & Quiet Ending: What Happens To Anne And Lily?
After Craig leaves, Leslie comes up with the plan to cover their tracks and get rid of any evidence around the house, like, their fingerprints. She also wants to threaten Anne and Lily to silence them so that they’ll be too scared to report the women to the authorities later. Emily, Marjorie, and Kim happily go along with this idea and relentlessly torment and abuse Anne and Lily. The women take gross pleasure in humiliating and intimidating Anne and Lily. They dance around to music while Anne begs for Emily to leave her sister alone.
By this point, their vitriolic actions are no longer about saving their own skins— if it ever was. Instead, they freely take out their anger on Anne and Lily. However, soon, Lily starts to have an allergic reaction to the peanuts the women force-fed her earlier. As her throat closes up and her body goes limp, she falls to the floor. After Anne’s gag gets removed, she begs the women to get Lily’s epi-pen. Nevertheless, Lily dies on the living room floor, still tied up.
Emily and her friends realize their home invasion felony has just turned into a full-blown hate crime murder. Everyone starts to freak out, unwilling to face the consequences of their actions. Leslie realizes their only way out now is to kill Anne to leave no witness or trace behind. At this point, it’s worth noting that Leslie is an ex-convict. Moreover, she used to belong to a prison gang, most likely a Nazi one. Though Emily, Marjorie, and Kim are all violent bigots, Leslie often leads the charge as an unappointed leader.
As such, Leslie tells Emily that they need to make Anne’s body look like a rape victim’s since, in that case, the police will rule out female attackers. She assaults Anne with a carrot and then smothers her to death with a pillow.
Do Emily And Her Friends Get Convicted For Their Crimes?
After Anne and Lily’s murder, the women dissolve into a mess of frenzy and agitation. Since none of them regard non-white people to have value, they aren’t particularly agitated by the murders. Instead, they are worried about their own futures and what would happen if they get arrested for this.
While Leslie abuses and kills Anne, Emily, Marjorie, and Kim use cleaning gloves and bleach to get rid of the numerous fingerprints they have left around the house. Afterward, they put Anne and Lily’s bodies in sacks. They load the bodies into their cars and drive down to the pier. There, the women transfer the dead bodies onto a small boat that belongs to Kim. Leslie and Emily get in the boat and rows it out far into the lake. Once they reach a considerable distance from the shore, they dump Anne and Kim’s bodies into the lake. They have also added several food cans into the sack alongside the bodies in order to ensure it sinks deep into the water. Due to the late hours of the night, no one notices their menacing presence, and they are able to escape without consequences.
However, after the women leave, Anne emerges from the water, still alive and breathing. Though the movie ends with that shot, it’s impossible not to speculate and hope for the downfall of Emily and her friends. It’s clear that the women are way in over their heads and have little idea about what they are doing. Since they couldn’t even successfully kill Anne, it’s possible they left traces and evidence behind on the crime scene as well. Moreover, earlier, when they are mirthfully tormenting Anne and Lily, Marjorie records their exploits on one of the sisters’ phones. As such, there is plenty of physical and eye-witness evidence of their crimes that Anne can use against the women.
What Was Emily’s Club About?
As the name suggests, Emily’s club, “Daughters For Aryan Unity,” is a small, underground Nazi organization for white supremacist women to come and discuss their lives and opinions and find support among like-minded people. Every woman in the group believes a “multicultural war” is ongoing in society since none of them get to be outright bigots without facing the consequences anymore.
As per Nazi ideology, the women believe their Aryan genes make them superior to other races and expect to be rewarded for it. Therefore, like Marjorie, many of them cannot even fathom the idea of a woman of color professionally surpassing them and take it as a sign of supposed oppression. As such, the women freely indulge in bigoted behavior like using racist and homophobic slurs and doing the Nazi salute.
In a way, by creating this “safe space” for such outright hateful behavior, Emily stokes the fire that ultimately leads to the film’s violent climax. By finding acceptance and encouragement for their bigotry, Emily, Leslie, Kim, and Marjorie become so disconnected from reality that they find a way to assure themselves that they are the victims of a hate crime they committed. As such, Emily’s Club acts as a cautionary tale about what happens when ideologies that perpetuate discrimination against communities are left unchecked.
Read More: Where Was Soft and Quiet Filmed?
