Star, camera work provide scary foundation for 'Silent House'
By Dann Gire
Daily Herald film critic
dgire@dailyherald.com
Any review of the new horror film "Silent House" can't reveal or even suggest what the story is really about without utterly ruining the movie experience.
What I can say is this: That the amazingly talented and charismatic Elizabeth Olsen - star of last year's surprisingly well-made cult drama "Martha Marcy May Marlene" - plays a young woman named Sarah whose visit to her family's old summer house with her dad and uncle quickly turns ominous after an unseen someone apparently breaks in and starts menacing the owners.
Olsen's performance deserves plaudits if for only for her sheer stamina in suppressing violent screams for most of the movie's scant 88-minute running time.
Swaddled in a tight, low-cut sweater, Olsen brings such believability and vulnerability to Sarah, her character's two-note acting range (cute/terrified) never grows boring or irritating.
Considering that her face spends most of the time shoved into claustrophobically tight close-ups, that's no small feat. The ample cleavage doesn't hurt, either.
"Silent House" has been codirected by the husband and wife team of Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, who concocted a nifty poor man's "Jaws" back in 2003 titled "Open Water."
It, like "Silent House," was allegedly inspired by a true story, and in this case, "Silent House" is also a remake of a Uruguayan thriller titled "La Casa Muda," with alterations for American audiences.
Sarah goes to help dad John (Adam Trese) and Uncle Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens) fix up their vacant Victorian house, all boarded up after squatters smashed the windows.
When Nathan Larson's suggestively frightful music, bordering on atonal nerve jolts, goes to work, Sarah hears loud, terrible sounds and finds Dad near death in an upstairs room.
Thankfully, "Silent House" avoids the overused, now cliché gimmick of "found footage" jump-started by "The Blair Witch Project."
But the filmmakers do borrow two ideas from Alfred Hitchcock. From 1954's "Rear Window" they use camera flashes to light up a dark room, and from 1942's experimental movie "Rope," they make their movie appear as if it has been photographed in a single take. ("Rope" was actually eight 10-minute shots seamlessly edited to give the appearance of no cuts.)
From the overhead opening shot to the tracking shot at the end, Igor Martinovic's impressive camera work looks as if he captured "Silent House" in a single take. (He didn't; the last 15 minutes were actually reshot for the final version.)
More impressive is how Martinovic's camera doesn't track the actors so much as stay ahead of them while shooting them from the front.
In other words, the camera doesn't show us what the characters are seeing, but how the characters react to what they are seeing, which we don't. Not right away.
"Silent House" (the title has nothing to do with actual sound, but with the idea of a terrible silence) contains the ingredients of a great horror tale, but early on gives away its power by making it obvious we're being manipulated; that things aren't quite what they should be.
Dad and Uncle Peter hardly seem old enough to have a teenager like Sarah. And why do they keep hiding old Polaroid photos from Sarah?
Kudos goes to Olsen's cleavage, a perfect distraction from the blood stains on her chest that magically move around from shot to shot.
First there's one stain, smeared. Later, two separate stains appear. Even later, bigger separate stains.
Not since the roving crimson hand print on Admiral Kirk's white uniform flap in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" has there been a blood stain this anxious to travel.
“Silent House”
★ ★
Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, Adam Trese, Eric Sheffer Stevens, Julia Taylor Ross
Directed by: Chris Kentis and Laura Lau
Other: An Open Road release. Rated R for violence. 88 minutes