I said it before with the film Martha Marcy May Marlene, and I’ll reiterate it here; Elizabeth Olsen is chock full of talent and is going to be one of those truly great actresses. Silent House is a very competent, creepy horror film, and she is a big reason for that. But it’s two of the other actors that hold this back from being great.
I said it before with the film Martha Marcy May Marlene, and I’ll reiterate it here; Elizabeth Olsen is chock full of talent and is going to be one of those truly great actresses. Silent House is a very competent, creepy horror film, and she is a big reason for that. But it’s two of the other actors that hold this back from being great.
A young woman finds herself trapped inside her family’s lakeside retreat home. She hears noises and feels another presence in the house and is unable to contact the outside world as events become more ominous and threatening.
Silent House was filmed in one continuous shot – no cuts. This makes for a very immediate, real time experience. Whatever happens to Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen), happens to us right along with her. The hand held camera style- which I’m starting to get tired of, mind you – still works like intended here. It’s very effective at keeping things tight and keeping the urgency palpable. We see things as Sarah sees them, like we’re right there with her.
This is also based on a Uruguayan film, La Casa Muda. This U.S. version is written by Laura Lau, and directed by herself and Chris Kentis, who made Open Water in 2003. I haven’t yet had seen La Casa Muda, but they certainly succeed here in creating an urgent and creepy atmosphere.
Sarah and her father, John, and uncle, Peter, are at their family vacation house to fix and pack it up because they are going to sell it. It’s a great location, big and full of boxes and items from their past, deeply shadowed and dark. The house itself is like a character in the film. Things start innocuously enough; Sarah is visited briefly on the porch by a childhood friend she doesn’t remember, then once inside she hears noises upstairs while her father and uncle are in the basement. But then things escalate when after seeing a shadowy figure she can’t locate either of them. The film becomes a creepy, high-paced nail-biter as Sarah tries to avoid this mysterious intruder and we try to piece together what might be happening.
It all works rather well. Silent House kept me on the edge of my seat, and my mind racing at the possibilities. And as I said, Elizabeth Olsen is great as Sarah, as she has to pretty much carry this film because it’s shot in one continuous take; the camera is on her ALL the time. Her fear seems very real. And the plot is solid here, and there are no holes that I could find. Frankly, for almost 80 of the 88 minutes of this film, I was right on board and finding it to be a good horror film, alternately creepy and thrilling.
But then we came to the end. Oh, I hate to have to do this because some movies you just kinda root for, you know? But the end just completely took me out of the film and didn’t sit right with me. It’s not the direction of where the film went- that was fine, and even a cool twist. But the supporting actors that played Sarah’s father and uncle just didn’t sell it to me. And their dialogue felt trite. It was so cliched, and delivered so awkwardly that I couldn’t buy into it. Perhaps shooting in one take wasn’t enough time for them to work through the material, or they delivered their dialogue poorly, I don’t know, but it was a bummer.
I don’t even know how to rate a movie like this. I really liked it until that last 10 minutes. Maybe two and a half kittenhands? It’s so close to good.
~ Neil T. Weakley, your average movie-goer, frustrated at this films’ fixable problems.