Silent House

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Year:	2011
Country of origin:	USA / France
Director:	Chris Kentis, Laura Lau
Genre:	Real time spook-fest
Starring:	Elizabeth Olsen, Adam Trese, Eric Sheffer Stevens, Julia Taylor Ross
Rating:	3/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1767382/
Tagline:	Real fear in real-time
Favourite line:	None worth mentioning

American remake of a Uruguayan original?
No, honest.

The plot:
Sarah, returning to her family home after many years to help her father renovate it ready for selling, finds things unsettling from the off.
After walking by the lake, she returns to the house and is met by someone claiming to be an old friend. Trouble is, Sarah doesn’t really remember anything about her.
Later, in the house, a noise upstairs unnerves her, and Daddy goes to investigate. Then Daddy disappears, and now Sarah is alone in the house.
Or is she?

Got to confess, until the release of this one, hadn’t heard of the original, so I’ll spare you the usual moan about pointless remakes.
The main sell here, as with the source, is the idea of real-time. The tagline – real fear in real-time – accurately conveys what the co-directors set out to achieve: an eighty eight minute, single act drama, without pause or break.
It’s a neat conceit, and one that is pulled off fairly seamlessly. Being the anal son of a bitch that I am, I looked hard for the joins that clearly must be there but, for the most part, it flows just perfectly. True, occasionally you know where the break is – it’s when the camera points at a wall and stops for a second, folks. Come on, wake up – but it never interferes with the artifice.
That aside, the film itself is fairly standard psycho-horror stuff that pretty much reveals itself in the first fifteen minutes, then relies on chills and spills to maintain the interest, which it just about manages to do.
Elizabeth Olsen is perfectly acceptable in the lead role, and does her best with some damned difficult material. Essentially, she just has to act panic stricken for seventy minutes, which she certainly does.
Not as clever as it seems to think it is, perhaps – I guessed most of the denouement within the first third of the movie, and I normally watch movies clueless as to the possible resolution – and certainly not as good as the directing pairs’ previous effort, Open Water, this is just about worthy of a cinema outing, I would say and, if you are at all tempted to watch it, I would recommend seeing it on the big screen.
I suspect this would be dull as toast on TV.
Decent.
Ish.