When your own father is one of the most powerful creative minds of all time and has shaped modern blockbuster cinema like no one else, then it’s not easy as an offspring to fight your way out of the shadow of the family name. So it’s quite possible that Destry Allyn Spielberg, daughter of Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg, decided to distance herself from her father as much as possible right from her debut. So she makes it clear right from the start that she wants to take her own path. “A Quiet House” – the much nicer original title is “Please Don’t Feed The Children” – is a small, independently produced semi-horror chamber game that one would hardly associate with the name Spielberg.
The plot revolves around a group of teenagers who fall into the clutches of a highly disturbed ex-nurse during a zombie apocalypse. The clearly visible desire to stand on one’s own two feet is commendable and likeable. But unfortunately the Spielberg daughter’s first film is just mediocre: the fact that we already know everything in a very similar way, for example from “28 Days Later” or “Misery”, could perhaps be tolerated – but the script is not only not particularly good, but in some places it’s not even really coherent.
The ex-nurse Clara (Michelle Dockery) has her own idea of how life should be in the undead post-apocalypse…
At least the premise is a little different from the usual zombie plots: a mysterious virus has turned most of the adult population into undead cannibals. Researchers have now come to the conclusion that children and young people are the carriers of the virus, which is why all minors should now be locked away in camps (which as a concept is certainly not entirely reminiscent of the Corona school closures while offices remain open).
But some kids are smarter than their elders – and so Mary (Zoe Colletti), who joins Jeffy (Dean Scott Vazquez), Ben (Andrew Liner), Vicky (Regan Aliyah), Seth (Joshua Melnick) and Crystal (Emma Meisel), escapes. Where the six teenagers, some of whom look a little too old, want to escape to is not entirely clear thanks to the script’s somewhat arbitrary approach to locations, but it doesn’t play a major role either. Ben is seriously injured while escaping – and so the young people end up with ex-nurse Clara (Michelle Dockery), who lives in a remote country house and has no intention of letting the visitors go again. She seems to have a particular interest in Mary for an unknown reason…
Good approach, but…
At least as soon as the disappointingly pale teenagers arrive in the eponymous house, “A Quiet House” develops a harmonious atmosphere – and “Downton Abbey” star Michelle Dockery feels like she shoulders the entire film with her calm, controlled psychopath performance. That’s enough for a rainy Sunday afternoon, but not necessarily for a trip to the cinema – that was probably also the case in the USA, where the film was released on the free streaming platform Tubi in the summer of 2025 after its 2024 premiere at the Fantasy Film Festival in Sitges, Spain.
The premise of “A Quiet House” is basically a generational conflict taken to the extreme – with obvious Covid pandemic parallels: the young are literally driving the old people crazy here. However, Destry Allyn Spielberg doesn’t leave it at that, because there is no solidarity even among teenagers. Instead, there is a constant mistrust among young people – the exact opposite of the typical 1980s Amblin productions by Steven Spielberg (especially “ET – The Extra-Terrestrial” and “The Goonies”).
Destry Allyn Spielberg obviously likes things a little crass – her famous father Steven Spielberg probably wouldn’t shoot pictures like that.
The paranoid mood is effectively condensed in the house, which is convincingly designed by the set designers, but unfortunately little is made of it afterwards. The plot follows well-known patterns when entering Clara’s domicile and is also annoying due to the rarely stupid behavior of the victims, which can hardly be justified even in view of the extremely stressful situation.
The young people remain relatively pale anyway due to the thin figure drawings. The undisputed star is and remains Clara, who seems a little too obvious like a sister of Annie Wilkes from “Misery”, but still carries the film until the end credits.
Conclusion: Despite the well-known last name, in this case there are reasons why the directorial debut of Steven Spielberg’s daughter Destry Allyn only reached German shores late (the premiere was in October 2024). “A Quiet House” manages to get over the finish line thanks to a harmonious atmosphere and a great performance by Michelle Dockery, but after the credits roll it will still be difficult to remember for much longer.