In 1998 the neo-noir B–movie guilty pleasure “Wild Things” came out of left field making some waves at the box office while critics were awakened from their naps thanks to some steamy hanky panky between Denise Richards, Neve Campbell and Matt Dillon. Since then there have been a few other failed attempts to raise interest in sexual taboos. Jamie Babbit’s (“Because I’m a Cheerleader”) “The Quiet” is another one of those failures.

Dot (Camilla Belle, “The Chumscrubber”) is a pretty deaf-mute teenager who has recently come to live with the Deer family after her father is killed in a freak accident. The Deers, Olivia (Edie Falco, “Freedomland”) and Paul (Martin Donovan, “The Sentinel”), are just getting their bearings inside their newly refurbished home. Their only daughter, Nina (Elisha Cuthbert, “The Girl Next Door”), is a teenager the same age as Dot. The two used to be childhood friends, their relationship fractured in no small part due to the latter treating the former with course abruptness whenever she is hanging with her catty cheerleader girlfriend Michelle (newcomer Katy Mixon).

But Dot sees through her friend’s façade and can tell she is putting on a mask in order to hide what’s really going on. Not that she can really judge her, the deaf girl herself standoffish at school, rather inclined to hide behind her long bangs and oversized, shapeless clothing as to not allow others to see who she really is.

But each girl is harboring a secret, secrets which force the duo into a fragile, tenacious friendship. Nina is having an incestuous relationship with her father, while Dot can really hear and talk. What follows is a somewhat sordid metaphorical foray into the darker aspects of human nature, but it is all undone by ham-fisted dialogue by screenwriters Abdi Nazemian and Micah Schraft and undercut by plodding direction from Babbit. The climactic act is all but underscored with a Sharpie, nothing more than a junky resolution to what could’ve been an interesting character study.

Falco and Donovan are wasted in the process, Olivia zombie’d-out on sleeping pills and other pharmaceuticals while Paul’s subtle shades eliciting sympathy evaporate in the second half when he suddenly transforms into a ridiculous monster. The busty Mixon makes for a nice bitch until her character becomes a parody of itself, while Shawn Ashmore (“X-Men: The Last Stand”) provides a somewhat sympathetic nice guy but only until that aforementioned clumsy ending.