This movie really caught me by surprise. Thought I would just watch some niche movie for the Elizabeth Olsen eye candy, ended up enjoying the best horror movie in years. No cheap jump scares or special effects, but constant suspension, and all that in one shot. A real gem!
Remake WTF, why??? The original was grand and the American copy was not :@
SILENT HOUSE KEEPS THINGS A LITTLE TOO QUIET…
I have been wanting to watch this film for a long time and finally got to it the other day. I thought it was just going to be ghost story type film or something like Paranormal Activity but it turned out to be something very unexpected!
It had a lot of suspense despite its shortcomings. It gets a bit old as the majority of the film is just Elizabeth Olsen’s character Sara wandering through a scary house. Elizabeth does a good job at being scared and crying her eyes out over these scary sounds though! There are times it feels very Blairwitch Project. The film is shot entirely with a subjective camera, always at arm’s length of the character. There is even a scene near the end common in this type of film, where the girl using a camera, snaps a series of pictures that momentarily light up the dark attic. It just feels so low budget that you feel like someone made it for a school film project or something, because of this you can’t really get lost in the movie.
Although the ending was out of left field, I liked this twist and thought it added to the film. The problem with it though was that it wasn’t executing properly and the overall storyline had too many holes in it. It needed more too it, more flashbacks - something. After doing a bit of research on the film I found that is was actually a remake of a Spanish film of the same name and that it was based on a true story. Not sure if that movie delved into the back story more or not…
All in all it was a film that could have been really great, but too many things made it feel like someone just took a camera and tried to create a movie over the weekend at their cabin.
MEH, 5/10
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The movie dragged a lot and the camera work wasnt great. Olsen did a great job but she was acting on a subpar script with crap camerawork. All in all, the plot was too flimsy to be interesting and by the end of the movie, I just wondered what everyone else saw i didn't.
The idea of Silent House (a young woman trapped in a large house taken over by squatters) was good but not enough to make a full length feature, and what they decided to fill out the rest with ruined the good idea.
Still, I bet the suspense was better on the big screen (it seemed well directed, anyway) and a young Elizabeth Olsen did a wonderful job, even if it was all in one speed.
Not a terrible film, but watch Don't Breathe again, instead.
Credit to Elizabeth Olsen for keeping her acting skills going for an entire movie without a cut, but the rest of the movie felt very much like something you'd watch high school kids make in an attempt to make a real movie. Wasn't a fan.
I've watched this once before but tonight I found that this movie was filmed in ONE TAKE.
I don't know why I noticed at the first time. It's nice. I like it.
It's a remake from an Uruguayan film, not a Spanish one.
Great idea; poorly executed. 6/10.
Expected DVD release: 24th July 2012
Shout by XiofireBlockedParent2022-10-16T15:39:22Z
I stumbled into this one last night with just the sales pitch of "Scarlet Witch did a horror when she was younger" and I'm so glad I gave it a try! Tense, frantic, claustraphobic and with a thin, subtle plot that worked really well for me. I am a sucker for these smaller scope horrors where everything is focused on a small set of characters in a scaled back setting, and Silent House really delivers on all those fronts. I'm also a sucker for the "fake-single-take" styling this movie goes for, as it never feels like you have a minute to breathe during the whole runtime. Great, great stuff. Give it a try, you might be as blown away as I am.
(Side note, my Trakt informs me that I watched this back in 2017 and I don't remember that viewing at all! Scary, maybe I too have some repressed memories :wink:)