That is what the home invasion horror film plays on and there have been many successful films over the years that have used this concept very well. Like any horror film concept, it could be argued that it has been overused slightly, but I must admit, the simple fear that our four walls that we live in can be broken into and violated by someone else who has no right to be there is still pretty scary.
The film, Silent House, revolves around Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen) - yes, the sister of the ever-annoying 90s twin super sensation, the Olsen twins. Y'know, Mary-Kate and Ashley - who is clearing out her old summer house with her Father, John (Adam Trese) and her Uncle, Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens). The house is boarded up from the inside (no one has lived there for a while) and the only light comes from candles and little electric lamps that they carry around - spooky! The film title is deceiving, because once Sarah and her Father are left to their own devices to clear up the house, we start to hear creaks, moans and bangs that couldn't possibly come from anything else except someone else... from inside the house.
One of the major strengths for the film is the acting. While the Father and the Uncle are not given much screen time to develop their characters, we pretty much spend the entire 85 minutes (approximately!) with Sarah, so she better be someone who we give a damn about! I can safely say that I was very impressed with Elizabeth Olsen - it's not really fair to compare her to her older twin sisters, because she really does hold this film on her own. When we are there with her holding her breath so the stalker doesn't hear her and when we see her fretting over her injured Father, she made us believe her situation. Sure, some of the time she falls into the Horror character cliche, (like, why walk around the house when you think someone is there with you? Surely you would just run for it?!) but it's nothing that can be overlooked when you see the pure terror on her face as she is stalked and the realisation that comes to her when she realises what's going on.
Now, apart from the end twist (more on that later!) the film's plot is pretty standard stuff. However, one quick look at the film's tagline ('Real Fear... In Real Time') and watching the first 10 minutes of the film, you realise that the film's style is quite different. It's filmed entirely to look like it's one single take - no edits, no slick cuts, no skipping any of the downtime in the house. Instead, we are introduced to the character of Sarah, and we literally never leave her side from the time that she walks into the house to the point at the end where she is desperate to get out.
Now, for the first 10 minutes it took me some getting used to. The filmmakers decided to use hand-held camera style (instead of a nice smooth stedi-cam) and they also decided to use a really shallow depth-of-field (a nice look of having the background/foreground out of focus and only one small part of the frame in focus) and have the focus keep coming in and going out. My eyes struggled to see what was in the frame (this was particularly bad during daytime scenes when you could see more.) The bad focus coupled with the hand-held camera style meant that I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking at. Having said that, the style really came into it's own during the darkened scenes inside the house, as the depth of field seemed to be used to much better effect and the hand-held camera really helped support the mood when Sarah was being chased around the house - before all the tension, the hand-held style just felt redundant.
Now, the one take style really seemed to add something to the film. Like I said before, it felt like we never really left Sarah's side throughout the entire film. Without getting too "Film School" in my review, the camera in a film is meant to represent the audience's Point-Of-View (POV) as to what happens in the film. With a completely unbroken and unedited shot, it really felt like we were there with her from the beginning until the end. The camera really seemed to take a personality of it's own (and replicated what I would do it the same situation). For example, when Sarah went to investigate a knock at the front door, while she went out to investigate the strange noise, the camera stayed inside and "hid" behind the door, peeking through the crack to look at what Sarah was doing. At another point in the film, the camera held back a couple of times, while Sarah went on ahead to investigate the strange noise.
Now, for the twist ending. Obviously, I don't want to give too much away at all, but let's just say that by the third act of the film, you realise that this isn't just your average home invasion film. We are given clues - Sarah doesn't remember much from her childhood at the holiday home, there are polaroid pictures left around the house (but we never see what they are of) and Sarah keeps having visions of a ghostly pale little girl. But what does it all mean? Let's just say, Sarah seems to have some unfinished business. There, is that mysterious enough without giving too much away?
What I will say though is that once the film's "twist" is revealed, all the horror and tension was sapped out of the film immediately. It just wasn't scary anymore. The film seemed to be too preoccupied with explaining everything as a motive and the person stalking the house just wasn't scary anymore. I didn't really feel cheated by the ending, it just felt a bit lazy - like when you were at primary school and you thought writing "... and it was allllll a dream!" was a brilliant way to end your story!
The ending to Silent House just felt like it was underdeveloped, a little cheap and left quite a few unanswered questions.
So, overall Silent House is a pretty solid home invasion horror film and uses the "one shot, no edits, real time horror" gimmick really well. It feels immersive, it's pretty tense and as an audience it feels like we cannot escape the house either alongside Sarah. It's just a shame that a kind of lame ending lets the film down from a decent build up in the first two acts.
***½ / *****
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