The Silent House (2010)

Great Film overall

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It's one thing to deceive the viewer in order to throw him off the track, to give him false leads, in order to present him with the end-twists that he couldn't/shouldn't anticipate. It's something entirely else to lie and cheat the viewer, such as is the case in this muda casa. Lying to the viewer is a cop-out, a desperate ploy that takes place when the writer and the director cannot think of an intelligent/logical way to set us up for the plot-twist. And yet, only half-way through the movie, I had strong suspicions that Laura herself is the killer. How did I reach this conclusion, given the writer's lies and the director's pathetic manipulation? Simple logic: the movie had both apparitions AND a real-life murderer, something that isn't quite possible, i.e. the muda casa at first offers us a genre-meshing, almost paradoxical situation. A ghost and a real killer? I consider these two to be mutually exclusive in a horror film. (Though it undoubtedly could work in a ZAZ comedy.) This ghost/killer contradiction helped me reach the only explanation that was left, that the damn muda casa must have neither: no ghosts and no hidden killer. Hence: homely Laura must be the murderer.So in spite of the lies and the shoddily set-up story, I still managed to predict the ending – and way before we were given the first hints that something odd is going on. (I am patting myself on the back as I write.) Perhaps remembering "Shrooms" helped. It's not as if this movie has a terribly original plot-twist.We are cheated/lied to in the most blatant way possible: Laura is shown as the victim, while totally erroneous/fallacious scenes that could not possibly implicate her in the murders fill the screen. The only way this moronic premise could have worked, without being stupid, would have been to show ALL the early events from Laura's perspective i.e. literally from her viewpoint, as if she were holding a camcorder. This approach would have meant that we almost never get to see her (except when she looks in a mirror), which would have been an added bonus since the actress playing Laura is so damn unattractive. So everyone wins.Alas, the film-makers had decided to treat the viewers as utter cretins instead, hence the swindle. They hoped that the crucial revelation that Laura is insane would somehow explain and justify their own cheating/lying, and all of the BS scenes early on; scenes that, with hindsight, mean absolutely nothing. Well, they failed.The main premise/set-up is not the only source of rubbish in LCM. We also have a series of stupid things going on once Laura "escapes" (ha ha) from the not-so-silent house. She just happens to run into Nestor, her former lover, who calmly decides to inspect the house in spite of seeing her covered in blood and in utter panic. So calling the police first was not an option? OK, you could argue that he didn't want to call the cops because of the photos that are in there. Fine; then how about at least going up to the cellar with some sort of weapon? Nestor finds his ex covered with blood, in hysterics, sobbing about an attack, and yet Nestor goes up there, with no weapons, never even considering calling someone for help, and very predictably gets attacked. It's absolutely ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is the scene when he leaves Laura in the car in order to briefly inspect the house - "BRIEFLY" being the key word here. He returns after just 18 seconds (!) with the following words: "there is nobody inside the house". That must have been one helluva lightning-fast house-inspection. 18 seconds for a house that big? I would think that an entire football team would need at least a few minutes to check the house completely for any potential intruders.More nonsense. When Nestor goes up to the cellar, he finds neither a body nor any blood. He even makes a comment that the cellar hadn't been visited in a while. This implies that Laura must have killed her Dad downstairs – and yet where is the blood? Where is the body? Nestor should have seen either the body or some blood (or both) downstairs. Laura had no time to clean up the mess. Or did she? Of course, I forget that the writers and the director are LIARS and CHEATS, so perhaps Laura did clean up the living-room before Nestor's arrival in some ulterior universe in which the ACTUAL plot was going on – while we (the suckered viewers) were watching the FAKE VERSION of events, the stuff that never happened, the moronic-universe version of events, such as Laura sobbing, running away from a hairy arm going for her neck, the ghosts, and that crucially phony scene in which her father appears to be murdered upstairs in the cellar while Laura was downstairs.To make matters worse, the movie has such an ugly – modern – look: it is an almost uni-colour film with nothing but shades of putrid green. (Horror) movies used to look beautiful/natural once upon a time in the 70s/early-80s, but nowadays most horror films are shoved through filters, made to look incredibly unappealing as if this ugliness somehow magnifies the horror. It doesn't; it simply makes the movie look ugly.It's never even hinted why her two victims killed her daughter, nor is it even entirely clear whether they did! (Remember: she's nuts.) This renders the story even more pointless.Furthermore, this damn boring casa drags on. The intro alone lasts an entire 17 minutes (an eternity in the horror genre), during which absolutely nothing happens. All we have in those 17 minutes is a crappy-looking actress and a movie that looks like a bird poo-pooed on it. I can find an ugly woman and bird-droppings myself, I don't need a movie for that.

The Spanish have been leading the way in horror movies in recent years. Rec and the Orphanage are two examples of great horror's which makes it all the more disappointing that The Silent House is such a poor film.This the story of Laura and her dad , Wilson who are asked to do up an old house but it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary house and that things are not what they seem.The best thing about this film is that it's only 80 minutes long. I don't know if i would have got to the end if it was a normal length film. This starts really well . It is suspenseful and has the feel of a Blare Witch type movie. There are very long scenes without breaking away , following the girl around this spooky house but then the film changes. It starts to become confused ( as i was) and far too clever for it's own good and instead of becoming a good old fashioned haunted house move it changes direction - for the worse. I was annoyed by this film because quite clearly it never had an ending to start with. The director snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory.

This is the flick made by Gustavo Hernández that put Uruguay on the map. And that for two reasons. First of all, it is a simple story and is so-called based on a real event. Secondly if you watch the flick closely than you can see that it was filmed in one shot. For that alone I would give Gustavo a big cheer. There are a few moments were the camera goes over black and there he could have edited something but still it is to be believed that it was a one shot flick. On the other hand it clocks in at 90 minutes and let me first say that I hate people going out of the cinema while the end credits are running and this is a perfect example why, after the credits the flick goes further for some 10 minutes!! There are only 4 actors in it but the most important one was Florencia Colucci, she did an excellent job and carries the movie all the time. Naturally it can't be all positive that I am saying. Due the reason of one shot projects you are bound do restrictions. You can't have close-up to close-up when they are talking, and you have to notice that the camera has to follow you too everywhere you go. Excellent done by Pedro Luque but it slows the flick down sometimes. But if you dig the first 40 minutes then you are going deeper into what is happening. It isn't gory or whatsoever, there is red stuff in it and it really needs the dark to give the creepy overlook. There aren't jump scene's in it like Apollo 18 or the Paranormal Activity saga but it do delivers some thrilling moments. If it is in fact based on a true story than it was really weird what happened. One to see due the way it was shot and for the country it was made. Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Story 4/5 Effects 4/5 Comedy 0/5

I like horror movies . . . a lot. I don't care if they're daring & original or formulaic. If they're made well, I enjoy them. That being said, if you don't like the daring & original type (Blair Witch Project, REC, Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield, etc) you may not enjoy this one as much as I did. Sometimes these types of movies fail miserably (District 9). This one was excellent. The word that kept coming to mind as I watched it was 'creepy'. And the Polaroid flash sequence was one of the most frightening movie-watching experiences I've had in hundreds of horror flicks.I actually read one review on this site where the viewer didn't like it because it didn't give a clean answer to questions that arose from the plot twist. Really? Seriously?? If you feel the way this reviewer did, you may want to stick with any of the Final Destination incarnations. There is certainly nothing challenging in there. All tied up with a nice bow on top.Unfortunately, as with Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Silent House will undoubtedly be dumbed down and ruined when it goes through the Hollywood cookie cutter machine. Do yourself a favor . . . again, as with GWTDT, watch the original, subtitles and all!