20130923: Horror Review--Silent House

Silent House

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length, 2012, thriller, horror, mystery, rated R, 86 minutes.
2. IMDB: 5.2/10.0 from 12,553. 
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 41% on the meter, 30% from 40,989 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Chris Kentis, Laura Lau.  Screenplay: Laura Lau.
5. Starring: Elizabeth Olsen as Sarah, Adam Trese as John, Eric Sheffer Stevens as Peter, Julia Taylor Ross as Sophia.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Sarah, John (her dad), and her Uncle Peter go to the family's lakeside house to pack before selling the place.  Sarah meets Sophia, who claims to know her, but whom Sarah does not particularly remember.


2. Sarah sets about to clean out the room where she and her cousins used to stay.


3. After the establishing footage, the film changes mode.  Sarah is alone, and gets scared for a number of reasons.


4. Sarah cannot find a way out of the house.  Someone seems to be in there with her.  She finds her father badly injured and bloodied.  She decides to try to leave the house so she can get help.


5. She finds signs of squatters having stayed in the house intermittently.  Again, someone else is there, and she hides from them as best she can.  She keeps encountering locked doors, and the only key she has does not work the first time or two.


6. She gets out, and meets her uncle in the driveway.  Peter goes into the house with his gun.  They have trouble finding John, but they do find a bloody patch where he had been.


7. The generator goes out, they are in darkness, and someone takes Polaroid photos.  When the generator starts again, Peter is gone, Sarah is hiding under the table, and she sees odd things.  This includes Peter being dragged away by his feet.  Sarah gets Peter's gun, and takes some shots at unknown targets.


8. Sarah has a recurrent hallucination of a small girl.  She starts seeing growing blood pools all over the place.  Sophia visits.  Looks like Sophia is also an hallucination.  After all, no one else was shown interacting with Sophia.


9. As expected, this was a psychological drama, and Sarah finds her way out of her own trap at the end.  There are no supernatural elements.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Psychological drama where abused daughter resolves bad family dynamics.
2. Final Rating: 3/10.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 2/10  Lots of semi-darkness, vignette filtering, and complete darkness, showing way too much enthusiasm for Blair Witch techniques.


2. Sound: 9/10 So much better than the rotten visuals.


3. Acting: 0/10 Elizabeth Olsen is the only actor for a large proportion of the film.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Finally resolves with one minute to go.  Misrepresented as horror.