Silent House Silent House

Experience 88 minutes of real fear, captured In real time

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.

Elizabeth Olsen Adam Trese Eric Sheffer Stevens Julia Taylor Ross Adam Barnett Haley Murphy

horror mystery thriller

85 mins   More details at IMDb / TMDb

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  • Carlos Laron

    Review by Carlos Laron ★½ 3

    I love me some Elizabeth Olsen, I really do.

    That's about the most I could say for this movie because while it only kept me almost interested at some parts, it was turned out to be an ultimate snoozefest. Gotta give props to the single take shot though!

  • Charlie Derry

    Review by Charlie Derry ★½ 1

    Shot using real time footage and manufactured into a single continuous shot, the style of filming is really interesting and works incredibly well for a horror. Unfortunately that also means that there are a lot of moments lacking any suspense as we follow the reactions of one over-emotional girl. It lacks any real scares and the twist at the end is awful, but if anything can come away from this mediocre horror it's that Elizabeth Olsen can bloody well act.

  • PRY

    Review by PRY ★★★

    Impeccably planned (the film is presented as one take, while it in fact has about 17 cuts) and centered about a more than believable performance (basically Olsen looks like she's s****ing her pants the whole movie) from the wonderfully talented, beautiful newcomer Elizabeth Olsen, one has to wonder if a modern classic was spoiled by a cheap third act. Because boy is the gimmick fun; kind of like a roller coaster. It's a shame this coaster stops before the fireworks go off.

    ALSO: The supporting actors aren't right for their roles. Thankfully we spend most of the time with our beautiful damsel in distress.

  • 24thhero

    Review by 24thhero ★★½

    Olsen is amazing in the lead and the real time sequence idea is promising, but it collapses under conventional direction and bad plot twists.

  • JonahM

    Review by JonahM ★½

    The horror genre has always been one that’s survived on a meager budget and since the scorching success of Paranormal Activity there seems to be an ever multiplying number of lo-fi attempts to shock audiences and, most importantly, take their money. The latest addition to this pile is Silent House, an American remake (obviously) of the Spanish film The Silent House, which sees a traumatic evening of Sarah’s (Elizabeth Olsen) life played out in real time. It uses the tried and tested 88 minute formula (the length of a standard DV tape) to daringly capture the events in, what seems like, one continuous take.

    It’s certainly a bold move but all it does is hinder the experience for a number…

  • Randal Silvey

    Review by Randal Silvey ★★

    Made the mistake of watching this before the original foreign language film which I usually do not do. This was on Netflix though so I went the lazy (American) route but now I'm concerned it probably spoiled the original for me. Here is my beef with this film. Whether or not the characters' reactions make sense in the long run while your in the middle of the film they seem idiotic.

    I love horror flicks but am tired of films that fall back on characters making obviously dumb decisions just to get them into suspenseful situations. It is not suspenseful, it is irritating. It almost seems like a crutch for lazy writing.

    That being said, there are some cool moments…

  • Tyrannorabbit

    Review by Tyrannorabbit ★★½

    For most of its length, the unbroken-shot gimmick works pretty well - horror movies are well suited to that kind of immediacy and benefit from it. But the last act brings in some twists that are alternately unfairly cuckoo, and just in putridly bad taste. Sours the whole thing.

  • SMRIDGLEY74

    Review by SMRIDGLEY74 ½

    Silent night...silent shite

  • Dave Gauer

    Review by Dave Gauer ★★

    Frustratingly aimless until it finally reached its (unfortunate) ending.

    I heartily applaud the setting: that house seemed endlessly huge and replete with a thousand terrifying possibilities.

    A particularly well-chosen shirt gives this movie two thumbs up in the props department category. Sadly, the other departments in charge of creativity and character development were missing in action.

    I've seen much, much worse. But the ambiguous situation and general confusion amongst the characters didn't come to a satisfying bang at the end - they just ended. This was not well thought out. And it needed to be.

    Budding scriptwriters: keep the twists in your cocktails and off your pages until you're ready to really blow our minds.