Don't bother running out the front door, it's locked

The recent successes of 2011’s Insidious and the Paranormal Activity franchise (2009-2011) have proved that audiences still have the urge to embrace their fears and venture into a haunted house. When done right, a haunted-house film can make you tremor as you wait to see what’s around the corner, instead of having you laugh or groan at the clichés. In order to be frightened and impressed, we have to be given something that’s inventive.

Silent House, the new spook-fest from directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, which is based on the 2010 Uruguayan film La Casa Muda by Gustavo Hernandez, has the shocking events unravel in one continuous shot that lasts the duration of the film. Coming from someone who loves the technique of using long takes to tell a story, this film was an on-the-spot interest-grabber.

Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen) travels to her family’s lakeside house with her father (Adam Trese) and uncle (Eric Sheffer Stevens) to help them fix it up before selling it. As the afternoon goes into the evening, Sarah begins to be plagued by household horrors. With the windows boarded-up and the doors locked, escape is nearly impossible. As the danger grows in the time that’s quickly running out, Sarah must figure out why she’s being terrorized and find a way out of the house.

Elizabeth Olson doesn’t short-change the audience by giving a hackneyed performance that is all too common in most of today’s horror films. Because the camera follows her throughout the long take, in what is meant to appear as actual time, Olson takes us with her as she both extracts her inner scream queen and carries the film with much competence. We see every bit of her fear and vulnerability as she goes from a girl who simply goes to investigate a strange noise in an attic, to a victim who is as helpless as a rodent clutched in the talons of a hawk. Most of her dialogue is spoken when she’s with her father or uncle, and since she is alone for a majority of the film, Olson relies on her facial expressions, heavy breathing and shrieks to demonstrate her panicked terror and defenselessness. Her realistic performance makes it easy for the audience to sink into her dread as we navigate with her through every ominous hallway and room of the house.

Besides Olson’s commendable performance, Silent House’s foremost attraction is the use of a long take that goes on for the entire film. This is the work of cinematographer Igor Martinovic. This long take is all shot with the shaky-cam method, making it simple for the camera to move anywhere, and does a fine job in creating a disorienting feel as it chases Olson through the house. At one point in particular, the camera follows her as she runs in fright through a field. The camera seems to lose control of its movement as it tries to keep her in the frame, and this institutes a potent sense of alarm and urgency. Given how much the camera is always in motion and possesses a documentary quality, Silent House is almost like a found-footage film. Thankfully, the filmmakers didn’t take the easy way out to deliver their story on that tired approach that has been popping up too often in horror films.

Laura Lau’s screenplay is very much like her directing partner’s 2003 film Open Water, which Chris Kentis wrote and directed and Lau produced. The latter film and Silent House both use small casts but very different settings. While Silent House is confined to a piece of real estate, Open Water takes place in the vast ocean. Both films carry two striking similarities. One of which is that the main characters in both films are stuck in one place. Elizabeth Olson is caught in the grips of the house, and the two divers from Open Water are stranded in the middle of the ocean and float in one place with the fear of attracting sharks if they move too much. The second similarity is that both movies deal with the terror of isolation in life-threatening circumstances. After viewing both films, it's apparent that Kentis and Lau have a talent for making horror films that are limited in both setting and characters.

The film’s final twist is the one thing that almost damages the experience of Silent House. I won’t go into specifics, but odds are you have seen a twist like this before in other movies. Although the big reveal isn’t the ending that the film deserved, it does serve as a clever metaphor for the main character’s repressed memories. The result is that Olson’s performance and the technical ambitions outweigh the overall story. However, with the shortage of new horror films that truly deserves to be placed in the genre, just put the key in the lock and enter this haunted house. At least it’s trying to be something different.

Final grade: B