Silent House
Silent House
R | 21 January 2011 (USA)
Silent House Trailers

Sarah returns with her father and uncle to fix up the family's longtime summerhouse after it was violated by squatters in the off-season. As they work in the dark, Sarah begins to hear sounds from within the walls of the boarded-up building. Although she barely remembers the place, Sarah senses the past may still haunt the home.

Reviews
Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.
Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
strike-1995 The unbroken shot is admirable, but when it is used to disguise the insipid story it becomes a labour to the eye.
Michael Ledo Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen) helps her dad (Adam Trese) and creepy uncle (Eric Sheffer Stevens, "My have you grown Sarah") clean up an old family lake house for resale. The cousins didn't want to help. Sarah has very little memory of the place as a child and doesn't even remember the neighbor girl who she played with...hmmm. The house has been vandalized and appears to have rodent damage which prevents the use of electricity. It is unnaturally pitch black dark inside, even during the day because the house is boarded up and of course they don't have cell phone reception. Between these few clues and the title of the film, we know which direction the film is going to take, just not the details. Yawn.Sarah becomes unnerved by things that go bump in the night and much of the film is dark or poorly lit with camera angels that focus on Sarah's cleavage. When they are not focused on her cleavage, they are extremely bad amateur angels that distracted from the film instead of enhancing it. Might work as a rental if you ran out of paint to watch dry. A fair film made bad by a director trying out gimmicks.F-bomb, strong sexual innuendo, no nudity outside of cleavage.
CinemaClown The Hollywood adaptation of the 2010 Uruguayan horror film La casa muda, Silent House is a shot-for-shot remake that even applies the same technical gimmick of the original in order to advertise itself as a film shot in one continuous take and while there are a couple of new elements added in the story, it fails to rectify the biggest plot hole of its source material.The story of Silent House follows Sarah, a young woman who's at her family vacation house with her father & uncle and is helping them clean the property and make it ready for sale. While her uncle is out for an errand, she hears strange noises, followed by an attack on her father after which she attempts to get out of the house but finds herself trapped inside and terrorised by a possible intruder.Written, co-produced & co-directed by Laura Lau, with added directional effort coming from Chris Kentis, Silent House is quite a tedious film to sit through considering that I've already seen the original and while that film suffered from numerous shortcomings of its own, what sucks about Silent House is that it ends up making the very same mistakes all over again as if no one cared to question the whole absurdity of its major plot twist.The images captured by its ever-moving camera is edited to give the illusion of an unbroken take from start to finish but the gimmick fails to add or elevate the tension. At 87 minutes, the film still feels a tad too long as only one thing keeps happening in the whole movie. The only effort comes from Elizabeth Olsen who carries the whole film on her own & tries to do whatever she can but unfortunately Olsen doesn't have enough material to work with here.On an overall scale, Silent House is an unnecessary remake of an already mediocre original that fails to take the advantage of the opportunity it had to improve on the shortcomings of that Uruguayan chiller. The scares are quite predictable, that major plot twist in the final act is as illogical as before, its one shot technique is quite useless, it is longer than it needs to be, and is barely held together by Olsen's committed performance. Another addition in the long list of pathetic remakes churned out by Hollywood, Silent House is worth skipping.
ICanNeverThinkOfAGoodUsername The film is okay. It takes a while to get into but after that I wouldn't say it was too bad. It's jumpy at times and it makes sense. Towards the end of the film I didn't think it would all come together. Films never usually come together towards the end especially scary films. Surprisingly, this film came together and things made sense. However, I really do think the ending could have been worked on a lot more.I've read some other reviews on here and what somebody else said makes complete sense... Apart from the last 10 - 15 minutes of the film you're watching something whereby a girl is running around a house and you think someone else in the house. The last 10 - 15 minutes really do turn this film around, it is for that reason that I give this film the rating I do.However, the actual point of the film which is only explained in the last part of the film - it feels like 3 minutes of the film. Before you know it the film's over and you think now what? It doesn't really make sense... You watch the whole film and see one thing which gives no real indication of what the point of the film is, then you get this unexpected twist which isn't really explained.On one hand I wouldn't recommend this film because the ending does let the film down. However, I would recommend it because the ending is a complete shock and a real twist and for that reason I recommend the film. Although you want to know more maybe people who like open endings would like this film... It wasn't the worst film by any means however it's not the best film either.