Review No.134: Silent House

Personally I still have an issue with remakes of foreign films, especially foreign films that have been released in the last few years, as I find the sole reason to do this is so people don't have to bother with those pesky subtitles after all who wants to go to watch a film and have to read? A brilliant example of this is Silent House a remake of a Uruguayan horror film, only released in the UK last year, which basically sees a young woman trapped in a house as mysterious killers finish off members of her family. In case of the US remake the girl in question is Sarah, played by the wonderful Elizabeth Olsen, who is helping her father and uncle clear up an old childhood home in order for them to sell it on. Early on it seems that there are some issues between the brothers namely that Sarah's father tries to stop her uncle Peter from drinking and driving at the same time she also meets an old friend from childhood who she has no recollection of. Sarah then starts to hear noises in the house and when she sends her father to investigate he ends up being thrown down the stairs and she comes to the realisation that there is someone else living there. There is then a lengthy section where the lights are turned off and Sarah has to navigate herself around the house but at every turn finds out that every exit has been blocked while at the same time finds out that someone else has been living in the house. Using an old Polaroid camera to help her see she finally finds her way out of the house before her uncle stupidly drives her back so that they can hopefully find her father's body. As always with horror movies there is a twist however as I had already seen the original foreign language version of this film.

The unique selling point of the original version of Silent House was that events occurred in real time and the film was made with one continuous shot which I think the Americans thought was such a good idea that they were annoyed they hadn't come up with it themselves. As is always the case when they haven't got an original idea they just copy the film that had it in the first place and that's what they've done with Silent House however here director Chris Kentis and Laura Lau have moulded together several different segments of the film in order to make it look like one continuous shot. As I've been down on several horror films so far this year for just employing the very quiet and suddenly loud technique I have to add the same judgment to this film however I feel that on the whole Silent House manages it better. This might be down to Elizabeth Olsen who is by far the film's saving grace as personally I think she did a better job with the character than original actress Florencia Colucci did. Apart from Olsen though this was a very patchy film with lots of shaky handheld camera movements plus I don't think Lau and Kentis utilised the Polaroid camera as much as they could've done. Most people will see the conclusion coming a mile off even if they haven't seen the original version from Uruguay which I didn't much care for in the first place. As I said in my introduction foreign remakes on the whole are a waste of time, especially in the case of Silent House which wasn't a great movie in its original language, and I personally believe that people should learn to embrace subtitles a lot more as it would open their eyes to a new world of cinematic possibilities.

Verdict: A needless remake of an average horror film is bolstered by a performance from Elizabeth Olsen so I will award this one a very generous 4.5/10