With about 15 minutes remaining in the film, The Quiet Ones (2014) injects an explanation into its main character, Jane Harper (Olivia Cooke), by crafting a story involving cults and satanic worship.

After some research at the library, experiment documenter Brian (Sam Claflin) returns to the research group and presents information about Jane’s past - a past that had been hidden from everyone by the research leader, Professor Coupland (Jared Harris) - and which involved a cult called Lilitu.

Though it doesn’t get thoroughly explained in the film, Lilitu is the real-world worship of Lilith.

1. An evil female spirit in ancient Semitic legend, alleged to haunt deserted places and attack children.

2. The first wife of Adam in Hebrew folklore, believed to have been in existence before the creation of Eve.

The film maintains that Jane is possessed by the spirit of a girl named Evie Dwyer. Brian’s research reports Evie was a clairvoyant child born with a birthmark in the shape of a Lilitu sigil, and her father, a Lilitu cult leader, believed she had the power to reincarnate Lilith. One day, Dwyer received a message indicating the cult should lock itself in a building one night. They did so, the building caught fire, and everyone inside died - including Evie.

“Lilith is a female Mesopotamian storm demon associated with wind and was thought to be a bearer of disease, illness, and death. The figure of Lilith first appeared in a class of wind and storm demons or spirits as Lilitu, in Sumer, circa 4000 BC. Many scholars place the origin of the phonetic name “Lilith” at somewhere around 700 BC despite post-dating even to the time of Moses.”

As such, Lilith’s origin predates the Hebrew bible by thousands of years. The name appears as far back as the Epic of Gilgamesh, and was later incorporated into the bible in the Book of Isaiah. In chapter 34, it describes the desolation of Edom, where the Hebrew word lilit (or lilith) appears in a list of eight unclean animals, some of which may have demonic associations. Throughout history and in different circles, she has many different interpretations. The film seems to capitalize on the notion that in most of these interpretations, Lilith is not a favorable or forgiving being.

“Originally, Lilith was an archaic goddess who, on her very first appearance in the historico-religious tradition, presented just one single aspect: that of a terrible mother-goddess. However, this character changed in the course of the development of the myth. By the time of the Talmudic-Rabbinic and Graeco-Byzantine traditions at the latest, Lilith had acquired a strange dual aspect. Depending on whether she is faced with a man or a woman, one or other side of her becomes more apparent. Faced with a man, the aspect of the divine whore or, psychologically speaking, that of the seductive anima comes more to the fore. To a woman, however, she will present above all the aspect of the terrible mother. As the anima figure, Lilith attempts to seduce not only the first man, Adam, but also all men, even today - because, according to one of Jewish mysticism’s ancient traditions, she is immortal. She will meet her death only on the Day of Judgement.” - Lilith: The First Eve

In modern occultism, the depiction of Lilith in Romanticism is popular among Wiccans and other occult circles.