A movie that a member of my household was streaming came to an end, and Netflix displayed thumbnails of “Check out these recommendations.” The background in one of the tiny pictures looked familiar. Clicking on the icon revealed that the scene had indeed been filmed in front of Inverness School.
The film is called “Soft & Quiet,” and it was shot entirely in Inverness over a period of four days in the spring of 2021 at the height of the pandemic. It was well received at the South by Southwest film festival a year later and was released in November 2022 in the horror film genre, then picked up for streaming by Netflix.
The opening scenes at the school introduce a kindergarten teacher chatting with a youngster whose mom is late picking him up. Once the lad is gone, the camera tracks the teacher as she walks to St. Columba’s Church, where she is hosting a gathering of half a dozen local women.
The meeting begins with refreshments, for which the teacher has brought a homemade pie. As she peels back the foil covering the baked goodie, the camera zooms in on the golden-brown crust—into which has been carved a swastika. Yes, the teacher is recruiting for a women’s neo-Nazi affinity group. It takes little coaxing for the attendees to begin whining about how they have been victimized by illegal immigrants, Mexicans, Blacks, “Jew banks,” even urban kids—you name it, all these women have suffered from the oppression of diversity and inclusion.
After a bit, the eavesdropping pastor at the church kicks them out (“Leave now, and I won’t report you,” he declares piously), and four of the women pile into an S.U.V. to pick up some wine at the local store, which one of the women owns. This takes us to scenes filmed at the Inverness Store, which climax when two Asian-heritage sisters come in to buy a bottle of wine and get assaulted because their “immigrant” presence offends the most obviously psychotic of the white-supremacist women.
One of the production’s conceits is representing that the 92-minute movie is one long, continuous shot (it isn’t). So while the quartet motors to the next filming location, a private home just south of downtown Inverness with a million-dollar view of Tomales Bay, the camera must keep rolling inside the vehicle, requiring that the script provide a strained line of dialogue to fill the time it takes to get to the destination.
Where they are headed is the Inverness-chic cabin of one of the sisters they had beaten up back at the store; the coterie’s reason for coming is “to teach the bitch a lesson” and “to take a sh*t in her tub.” (Hey, don’t look at me; I didn’t write this stuff.) One of the intruders is especially outraged that the sister inherited the house from her mother (just how “immigrant” does that make the sisters sound?). The targets of all this Valkyrian wrath aren’t home, so the women break in, helped by the teacher’s hunky husband, who fades inexplicably into and out of the storyline. For unclear motive, it’s essential that they find the homeowner’s passport. Two of the women search upstairs while the other two occupy themselves trashing the downstairs.
Predictably, the unsuspecting sisters come home, and the film plods tediously through well-telegraphed plot points toward a gruesomely violent denouement, setting up the final scenes in which the Nazi-ettes dispose of the sisters’ bodies. (Oops! Should I have warned, “Spoiler alert”?) Conveniently, the perps come up with a canvas kayak bag and off they go to “the lake” to heave-ho the victims into a rowboat and dump them into the water.
Inverness School, St. Columba’s and the Inverness Store are unmistakable on the screen, and by paying attention to individuals thanked in the closing credits it’s possible to surmise whose house was used for the mayhem scenes and in the film’s final moments on the shoreline.
I talked with The Rev. Vincent Pizzuto, vicar at St. Columba’s, who said he and his bishop’s council were shocked and appalled when the movie came out. They had been told it was about a woman’s anguish over bringing a child into a world facing eco collapse. The council has since adopted a policy requiring verifiable disclosure of message and content from anyone seeking to use the site for commercial filming or photographing.
Inverness School Principal Beth Nolan said she also feels the company was less than truthful about the film. The school was told the story was about a teacher facing the challenges of teaching during Covid. The school, too, will be looking more closely at content in the future.
For the Inverness Store, the shoot was nothing significant; it’s not uncommon for the business to accommodate filmmakers looking for a grocery store in which to film a scene at a check stand.
Do I recommend this film? Absolutely not. (But I’ll bet a lot of you are going to check it out anyway, aren’t you?)
Wade Holland is peeved that Inverness was disrupted by yet another film shoot just a couple of weeks ago.