As much as Silent House wants to be original, it's something we've all seen before. In fact, if you've seen the original film The Silent House, which was only released in 2010, you've really seen it before.
First of all, don't be fooled by the theory that the film is one 88 minute shot. It's not. What the filmmakers are really trying to do is have a film without any cuts. Meaning that there's no shot of one person in one room before we cut to a shot of someone else in another room. This is a series of long sequences, each done in one shot, put together by cleverly concealed edits.
In my mind, that doesn't really make it one cut. Of course, I wouldn't expect anyone to attempt to act for 88 minutes straight, especially when Elizabeth Olsen is onscreen for almost the entire time.
While the idea that the film takes place over 88 minutes is interesting, it is the biggest problem of the film. We follow the character Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen) as she, her father John (Adam Trese) and her uncle Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens) are fixing up their lakeside home. I guess they're planning on moving but I was never sure what the reasons were. I'm okay with that concept. We're just watching as Sarah and her family members are stalked inside their home. Who cares if they're moving or not, or even what the reasons are.
Peter, Sarah, and John have bigger problems than mold in their house.
The continuous shot spells trouble right off the bat. The camerawork is very shaky at moments, especially if Sarah takes off running. We're only seeing her point of view, so if she's running, so is the camera. I don't understand why the camera has to shake violently every time someone is doing something quickly. Why can't we be allowed to sit back a bit and take in what is happening? The shaking isn't causing more tension, it's causing nausea and headaches. That we're only seeing Sarah's POV does cause some well built suspense. We can hear an intruder, but we can't see them. There's no way to understand what their motivation is, but it's not hard to see that it isn't good.
Shaky camerawork isn't the only visual problem. There are many shots that are out of focus, and that probably has a lot to do with the extended sequences they're trying to film. You're not going to stop a good run 15 minutes in because that last 10 seconds was fuzzy. I get that. That should have been the exact reason to have cuts in the film though. Everything goes out of focus far too many times to be enjoyable and it really distracts from the entire experience.
Elizabeth Olsen does a great job, but most of her acting comes down to crying or screaming.
Olsen does very well with what she's given. A majority of the time, she's either crying, screaming, running, or attempting to be quiet while also being completely frightened. She does it well, but it's not really stretching her abilities. Adam Trese as her father John, and Eric Sheffer Stevens as Uncle Peter, don't fare as well, but I'm not convinced that it's a lack of talent. Every character in the film seems set up to be the bad guy. There's at least one moment for everyone where you think, hey, maybe it's that guy. Their performances come off as flat, uncaring, and awkward. Honestly, I believe there's a reason for that. They aren't actually in the film for very long, so those moments you do see them, and they way they act, go a long way in convincing you that they could be the one scaring Sarah.
It shouldn't take too long to figure out what's happening, or at least the general idea. Once I had decided the reason for what was going on, I gave up trying to figure it out. By the end, I wasn't really that far off. The only reason I could do that was because Silent House doesn't really offer up anything new. I've seen this all before, many times, and very recently actually. It could have been a great scare flick, but it's derailed by the gimmick of one continuous shot and an ending that we've seen too many times already.
I have a very specific comparison in my head, of a film that I really enjoyed, and one that I loved a lot more than Silent House. Both of those films seem to have left a good portion of viewers scratching their heads and wondering how it actually pieces itself together. That's actually the one part of the film that I really loved. The way they pull it off is more successful than this other film, and a lot more logical. In fact, the entire scenario is quite logical. Sarah doesn't do anything that I would consider stupid, and there are actual valid reasons for the things that happen. It's just not enough to fill theatre seats though, and I can't imagine this one is going to catch on.
Under the marquee – Will
