Ambitious but Rubbish: Silent House

The usual warning - there are spoilers ahead.

I keep running across horror movies where the "monster" is actually some sort of apparition or "shadow" or lingering energy or "bad vibe" created by some sort of domestic violence in the protagonist's past. For the most part, it's some form of molestation.

(An American Haunting, Absentia, Silent House, and another one that I'm honestly drawing a blank on because I watch so many terrible movies! To that end, I wish I could sort my "recently watched" by "genre" on my Netflix; seeing the cover of a crappy movie often jogs my piss-poor memory!)

Moving on!

I'm not about to try and tell you that I think groping little kids is okay or anything, but I will tell you that I'm already tired of this metaphor.

I mean, all these movies start with trailers / synopsis that claim to be something they are not; they look like haunted house movies or possession movies but turn out to be something less interesting. Typically the "fake out" is the same as in High Tension (your hero is actually your killer).

If there is no monster and no ghost and no demon, you had best really surprise me with your reveal. Unfortunately for Silent House, it was TOO obvious that there was nothing in the house with main characters; the female lead, Elizabeth Olsen continued to have "close encounters" with the supposed villain / entity / killer yet nothing hurt or captured her.

The only momentary mystery was if she is the killer or if she's in it with someone else (her creepy "uncle" perhaps?)

You're probably wondering why I even bothered watching this one and I'll tell you, I was truly intrigued by their claim that they shot the movie in real-time and in one take.

Now. I'm not stupid (and Chris Kentis is no Hitchcock) so I knew that they didn't really shoot the movie in one take. But how amazing would that have been if they had?! And, I grudgingly admit that they did a fair job of faking it.

Wrap up time.
I honestly can't even dig up enough effort to write anything else about this movie.

You can watch the Silent House trailer here:

Comments

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