I would always prefer that a movie fail because it contained too many ideas, rather than fail because it had none at all. Silent House isn’t exactly a failure, but it isn’t a success either, and that’s mostly because the filmmakers overplayed their hand as far as big ideas go. The directors, Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, are no strangers to experimental horror, so probably this should come as no surprise. Their first film, Open Water, was basically just two people stranded out in the ocean without a boat for its entire runtime, and Silent House maintains and amplifies that experimentation in minimalism. This movie presents its story to us in real time, and it’s made to look like one continuous shot that follows around the protagonist without cutting away. What they give us doesn’t work completely, and I walked out of the theater feeling a little disappointed, but seeing as I had been shown something ambitious rather than mundane, I found it a little difficult to be all that mad.
That’s not to say that Silent House is breaking new ground all over the place. In many ways it’s prototypical of the horror genre, and I actually found myself appreciating that aspect of the film more than any other. Step by step, the horror tone gets established with a precision that could only come from someone who’s a student of what’s come before. The action takes place in a dilapidated lake house that our main character Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen), her father (Adam Trese), and her uncle (Eric Sheffer Stevens) are rehabilitating and selling. All of the windows have been smashed out by vandals, so the house is boarded up and completely dark on the inside. The whole place is falling apart and rotten; wet, dripping, and covered in mold. The only way we can see any of it is through the moody lighting of flashlights and lanterns. Basically, this is the perfect place for something scary to happen.
The way the characters are introduced to us is perfect for horror movie setup as well. Sarah seems a little haunted and skittish, but otherwise is relatable and trustworthy. Everyone else that we meet seems strangely suspicious is some way, however. Whether it’s the way her uncle gazes at her just a beat too long, the way her father gets a little too aggravated when someone doesn’t follow his instructions to a T, or the way Sarah’s childhood friend seems a little too excited to run into someone she should barely remember, mistrust is always being cast over everyone we meet. We’re always wondering who’s going to be responsible for bringing the horror element into the film. By the time things have been set up and the first mysterious gallump gets heard coming from the next room, Silent House has you primed and ready to experience some horror scares, and it gets there by working completely by the book.
The other true strength of the movie is the fact that we have Elizabeth Olsen playing the lead. She’s a young actress who was hugely impressive last year in Martha Marcy May Marlene, and she’s able to show here that what she accomplished there was no fluke. We don’t really know anything about who Sarah is, and no dialogue of any real consequence happens over the course of this film, so mostly it’s left up to Olsen to tell the entire story with her face. Her muted reactions to the horrific things happening around her are the only anchor we have keeping us engaged in a fairly mundane story that consists of little other than stumbling around in the dark and hiding under tables, and she’s impressive supporting the weight of it all on her shoulders. Well, the costume designers who put her in such a low-cut tank top did some of the work when it comes to keeping us engaged as well, but most of the credit should probably be given to Olsen. Hopefully this is the last thankless horror role she has to take on the road to getting meatier parts, all the time.
That brings us to the big ideas brought to the table, and how they keep this movie from being a success. I mentioned the real time element and the experimental camera work already, but surprisingly enough, they weren’t the sources of the problems. I was pretty nervous going in, feeling like watching everything as it happens in one shot would get more tedious and feel more forced as things went on, but actually it all works pretty well. The first few seconds of the film scared me. We start with a swooping crane shot floating in over Olsen as she sits next to a lake, and then we transition to a jostling handheld shot as we follow her up a trail to the house where the action of the film takes place. It was all very showy and seemed like a promise of eventual nausea, but things mellow out from there and the moves the camera makes eventually become all but invisible. I think they were just going big in those opening moments to draw attention to the fact that this wasn’t being shot and edited like a traditional film.
So, the potential headache of watching everything though shaky, handheld camerawork was avoided, but what about that problem of there being no edits? A lot of the big scares that horror movies create come from quick cuts back and forth from the thing doing the scaring to the person being scared, or by showing us a looming danger that the victim isn’t yet aware of... so how does this one get the job done? By coming up with its own strategies. Sure, its unique presentation robs Silent House of a few tried-and-true scare tactics, but it affords it a few new ones at the same time. In other horror movies we get a momentary break when we cut away from a scare to something else; there are always little opportunities to catch your breath. Here no such breaks exist. You’re always there next to Sarah experiencing every second of the torment that she goes through, so the film is filled with a constant and ever-building sense of danger and dread. The effect helps Silent House feel a bit different than every other spooky house movie you’ve ever seen (unless, of course, you’ve seen the movie from Uruguay this is based off of).
The real problem is the other gimmick that didn’t get advertised. The camera work gimmick that you know about up front isn’t so bad, but the hidden, plot twist gimmick ends up sinking the ship. In an attempt to make this story about more than just a killer going after a girl, the filmmakers try too much and end up falling on their faces. It’s not that the turn this movie takes was necessarily a bad idea, it’s just that they don’t really pull it off. Enough clues are sprinkled throughout the build that you see where they’re going, and you can probably guess what’s really going on before it actually gets revealed; but afterward it still doesn’t make much sense. There are a number of strange, improbable happenings that take place over the course of Sarah’s methodical stalking, and rather than explain them away, the big reveal leaves us with even more inconsistencies to sort through. Silent House falls apart under scrutiny. The best of these horror movie plot twists tie everything together in a way you didn’t anticipate, but this one just yanks all of the dangling threads even further in different directions, leaving you with a pile of high-minded mess. I have a hard time faulting the filmmakers for trying to make Silent House deeper than it looks, but they might have been better off sticking to the typical, serial killer storyline. Nice try, but not quite.
