The horror genre is no stranger to gimmicks. From the days of William Castle shocking people in their seats, literally, to the found footage genre kicked off by The Blair Witch Project, horror is a testing ground for unique ideas that restrict the filmmakers or test their audiences. Silent House is the next entry in a series of gimmicky films. It's gimmick is taken from the original Uruguayan film from 2010 but harks back to Hitchcock's Rope. The film is supposedly shot in one long take, no edits, although any filmmaker can see numerous chances for cuts to have been made.
The plot is fairly straightforward at first. Trapped inside her family's lakeside retreat, a young woman, played by the beautiful Elizabeth Olsen, finds she is unable to contact the outside world as events become increasingly ominous in and around the house she is fixing up with her father and uncle. Things start to go bump in the night after a slow but intriguing opening 20 minutes. From there the plot tries to get tricky on us and indeed offers surprises. Unfortunately those surprises come at the expense of logic and unravel the tense mood created by the one shot gimmick.
The film was directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau. This is their second film after 2003's Open Water. That film also sort of relied on a gimmick but it's determination to see things through to a grisly end made it a success in some areas. Silent House shows off their considerable technical skill but also shows their lack for engaging us in the characters. Open Water felt the same way, we pitied the characters yet never empathized.
Silent House has some clever moments and some decent scares, particularly in a scene in a car. However so much of the good stuff is overshadowed by a gimmick that offers very little to the storytelling and and ending that insults its audience.
written by Matty Robinson
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