Silent House (2012) R

The husband and wife duo behind 2003's claustrophobic Open Water are back once more to make us squirm and beg for something to happen. While the film isn't as atrocious as that shark tale, it does ultimately fail to provide any real horror. What we get instead is loads of confusion, and eventually an unbelievably godawful ending. Writing/directing team Chris Kentis and Laura Lau had good intentions with this remake of the Uruguayan film The Silent House, but more often than not these types of film are destined for failure.

At least they got one thing right with the casting of young and forgotten Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene). Olsen is a star on the rise, even if the material here doesn't quite help her cause in becoming the next Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone, The Hunger Games). The storyline is quite simple, the dialogue is thin, the cinematography is shaky and the acting is sub-par. However, the first half of the film is actually quite watchable as we are eagerly awaiting for something to transpire. Instead what we get is The Uninvited sequel we sure as hell never asked for.

Olsen plays Sarah, a recent college dropout who's helping her father John (Adam Trese) fix up their old summer house so they can put it on the market. John and his brother, Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens), are doing most of the work while Sarah moseys around the house. The reason they're selling the house is because the place is routinely vandalised. They still can't seem to find the culprits.

One late afternoon, John is fixing something in the basement when Sarah begins to hear noises. All the windows are boarded up and the power is out so the entire house is in darkness. Sarah uses her old fashioned lamp for a light while she sorts boxes upstairs. She thinks nothing of these noises at first, but when they persist she begins to become frightened. She then hears a knock at the door. An old childhood friend is there to great her. She doesn't remember this "Sophia" character, but Sophie sure remembers her. Sophia goes on and on about childhood memories that Sarah can't recollect. They then make a date to catch up a little later in the evening. Sophia is creepy, to put it lightly, but Sarah tries to ignore the signs that point to her as a possible threat.

Sarah gets back to work, but the strange noises refuse to cease. She finds her Father and asks him to help her do a sweep of the house. He notices she's quite shaken, so he takes her dread as serious as he can. They find nothing of interest in the house so they depart and she once again goes back to work. A few minutes later an extremely loud crash is heard from the adjacent room. Sarah calls for her Father but he does not answer. It's not long before she realizes she's not alone in this secluded and dark summer home.

We get a short, blurry look at the man/creature/being stalking Sarah around the house, but it's still a mystery what/who it is. Sarah finds her Father bloodied and bashed, but alive. He has been bludgeoned in the head, and is unresponsive. She plays a nifty cat and mouse game with the dark stalker, which initially is actually quite nerve-racking. All the doors in the house are locked from the inside, so she can't escape. However, she finds a key in her Father's pocket that unlocks the cellar door. She retreats to the basement, in the best scene of the film, and momentarily escapes.

She runs for her life for a few minutes, then stops to catch her breath. She then sees a little girl staring at her, which causes confusion. This is about the point where things become substantially confusing. Her brief encounter with this strange, little girl is interrupted when Peter almost runs her over with his car. The girl has now disappeared, and Sarah must now explain what has happened in the house. She explains that her Father is badly injured and is still locked inside the house with a mad man. Peter grabs his gun and demands Sarah to stay in the car.

Peter searches the house, but can't seem to find anything. Meanwhile, Sarah is greeted harshly when the stalker comes in through the hatch of the car. She escapes into the house and into Peter's arms. Peter couldn't seem to find John, but they look together a second time. The film amazingly still hasn't lost me, but I'm growing quite impatient at this point.

From this point on things begin to unfold reasonably quickly. Things get awfully confusing, which is certain to piss a lot of movie-goers off. We've seen the whole schizophrenia back-story beaten to death in other films (hint). The final "twist," which was obvious to me a mere five minutes into film, is a total downer and will certainly leave a sour taste in your mouth when it's all said and done. Expectations were low, but I happen to like cheesy, campy horror films. This film was neither. It's extremely serious, completely dry on laughs and tremendously boring.

Documentary-style filmmaking is becoming a bit warn, but it's not dead. This film just couldn't find a good balance of thrills, dread and entertainment. The "shot-in-one-take" method was a decent idea, but laughable dialogue and a complete lack of scares failed the concept.

While this film isn't a complete failure, it's definitely not something I would recommend. Olsen holds her weight though, but she didn't have a lot to work with. Trese (40 Days and 40 Nights, Zodiac) is a terrible actor, to be quite frank. His line "Peter, you are SUCH a loser!" is one of the worst in recent memory, and it comes at the climax of the film to boot.

I'm not sure what else to say. Silent House is not scary, not thrilling, not entertaining, not funny, has a terrifically terrible ending, is poorly acted; did I miss anything? I can't believe I'm going to give it this high of a grade, I must be out of my mind. Way too generous.
C-