Tell me a story

In Silent House Elizabeth Olsen plays Sarah, a college aged girl visiting her family’s lake house with her father and uncle. The family plans on selling the place, and the three of them are there to pack their things. Sarah hasn’t been back since she was a kid. It looks like no one has been there for a few years. There’s mold growing in the walls, the electricity doesn’t work, and to prevent squatters they’ve boarded up all the windows and padlocked all the doors. They have to walk around with flashlights and lanterns if they want to see anything.

So when Sarah starts hearing strange noises in the house, noises her father and uncle aren’t responsible for, it’s understandable she’s afraid. Especially after her father disappears. Especially after she hears a stranger walking through the house. And especially after the only key to the front door goes missing, trapping her inside.

Eric Sheffer Stevens, Elizabeth Olsen, and Adam Trese as Uncle Peter, Sarah, and Dad.

The movie gets scary very fast. In a normal horror movie like this, we’d get to see the characters spending time at the lake house and interacting for maybe a couple days before any of horrors would really begin. We’d learn about them, get to identify with them, and things would slowly get scarier and scarier. In Silent House we don’t get that much time with Sarah before she’s hiding under tables while a stranger’s feet slowly walk past. The movie is filmed in real time, which means that every minute that transpires on the screen also transpires in real life. So we don’t have days to spend with Sarah. We only get an 88 minute window into her life, and we spend maybe only ten to fifteen minutes with her before it gets scary.

Normally I’m a fan of character development. I like getting to know the people a little before going on a journey with them. It makes me care about them, which I think is important when they’re about to be terrorized for a whole movie. If I don’t care about them, then their fate doesn’t matter to me and I’m not invested. We don’t get to know a lot about Sarah, which made me thankful Elizabeth Olsen was playing her. Elizabeth has got a really warm face with big expressive eyes. I don’t know anything about her, but she has an air of intelligence and depth. And she’s a really good actor. When she’s crouching beneath that table, hoping she won’t be found, with a look of sheer terror on her face, I believe the danger is real and I care. I understand that might not be enough for some people to care about her. I heard people in theater calling her stupid almost the entire movie. I was too worried about her to critique her decisions, though looking back, I don’t think any of her decisions were that unbelievable like in a lot of other horror movies.

A scared Sarah

This movie does have some standard horror clichés, like that scene of Sarah hiding under the table as the feet walk by. There’s another scene where’s standing on one side of a door with the intruder on the other side. Both scenes she’s struggling against her racing heartbeat and panicked breathing to be as quiet as possible. We’ve all seen these kinds of scenes before but you’re not thinking that about that when it’s happening. You’re just hoping that she isn’t discovered. I put myself so easily in her place that I found myself sitting upright and alert, my fight or flight mechanism almost engaged. Those moments were so tense.

What also contributes to the scariness of the movie is the camera work. It follows Sarah in real time throughout the movie. It’s not a found footage film, but it almost feels like one. It definitely elicits all the immediacy and intensity that found footage films tend to provoke. The camera is even shaky at times (which made me glad that she has to traverse the house so slowly in order to avoid detection; it minimizes the shakiness). There’s a scene where Sarah is running as fast as she can. The camera follows her, also running as fast as it can, making the image bounce and blur so much that you can hardly tell what’s going on. It’s great. It’s intense. My heart is pounding because I’m scared for her, and I can’t see where she’s going or what may be behind her. Following her so closely like this also really contributes to a feeling of claustrophobia inside the house.

Sarah searching the house

And what a creepy house it is. You would think that a house that belongs to your entire family would be a safe place, but it’s not. There’s no warmth in this house. It’s dark, it’s falling apart, and every room is full of boxes, rolled up carpets, big heavy pieces of furniture, some of it beneath covers—so many places where anyone could be hiding. It looks like even the furniture could betray you. It never feels safe there, which is so appropriate given the ending. I liked the fact that the movie was set during the day. The light from the outside makes such a great contrast to the darkness of the inside. It’s always night in the house. There’s such a feeling of wrongness in the house, this mold-filled, diseased house. Very well done.

Going back to the real time filming, there are some problems with this in that the movie will drag at certain points. We can’t ever jump ahead. I think it’s well paced enough though that I was never bored, but I did find myself wanting the movie to hurry a little and get to wherever it was going. Watching her slowly and quietly search the entire house can wear a little. At 88 minutes it’s a lean movie, but even that may feel a little long if you prefer a more quickly-paced movie.

My main problem with Silent House—and I’ve been going back and forth over it really is a problem—had to do with the ending, which makes it hard to talk about in a review. So I’ll give a minor spoiler warning here before continuing. I won’t give away the entire ending, but reading what I’m about to say will affect your view of the movie. So be warned. Use your mouse to highlight the next paragraph if you want to read my discussion of the ending.

SPOILER WARNING !!! SPOILER WARNING !!!

As the movie is building up to its big climax, it goes from being a horror-thriller to a psychological thriller, and just like that—imagine me snapping my fingers—it stopped being scary. All the tension leaves because at that point I know she’s pretty much safe from physical harm. I’m still interested in her story, and there are still mysteries and conflicts that haven’t been resolved yet, but it’s almost as if the consequences aren’t as high. If there’s a real intruder after her, I know what’s at stake is her life. If the intruder is part of her imagination, then what’s really at stake if it catches her? Her sanity I suppose. That doesn’t affect me as much.

I don’t want to belittle psychological problems, but in movies they don’t scare me as much as tangible, physical danger. I enjoy psychological thrillers, but I don’t particularly like when they come out of left field, especially when I was so into and so gripped by the terror of the film

I’m not upset with the ending though. I definitely think it was an interesting direction to go in, and it made the most sense given everything that came before it. I was just expecting something different, which is my own fault for not recognizing all the clues—and there are clues—along the way.

But then again if I had recognized the clues, I would have probably realized she wasn’t in as much danger as I thought, which would have drained the movie of its tension and suspense much earlier, so that wouldn’t have been good either.

SPOILER OVER !!! SPOILER OVER !!!

All said, I can easily recommend this movie to people. If big houses in the middle of nowhere scare you like they scare me, you’ll probably enjoy this one. It’s not perfect. There are some weird things in the movie that don’t make sense to me, and I didn’t think the ending was great, but I really enjoyed the journey to get there.

After the trailer, click on the link below for an interview with Laura Lau by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, where she addresses the fact that the film is not done in one continuous take even though it’s made to look like it was. (I must admit I was disappointed to learn that. A movie like this in one take would be beyond impressive)

Silent House
Directors: Chris Kentis (Grind, Open Water) and Laura Lau (Grind, Open Water)
Writers: Gustavo Hernández and Laura Lau (Grind)

Interview with Laura Lau: San Franciso Bay Guardian