Silent House

SILENT HOUSE's problems are apparent in its trailer, which has the same odd mesh of greatness and Hollywoodness, a mesh of something original and bold, and something mired by expectation and self-recognition. Original and bold: I speak of the cinematography and Elizabeth Olsen, who are the true masters of this film. A straight-out horror film, suggesting the Hollywoodness of the film, SILENT HOUSE begins in a very different way, though. A large, overhead shot of Olsen as she sits on a rock before a pond. She looks tranquil, but its the sort of out of place camera placement that suggests something's awry. Then it swoops down brilliantly in an arc, and we see Olsen move across the pond and over marshy ground to a boring driveway, and a couple of flat actors. The first time she spoke in the film, I knew I was in good hands, her iterations are perfect, expressive of a specific kind of person who plays with speech conventions as twirls them around playfully. Such a person can talk about Facebook or other such trite modernities without losing a step in their articulateness. The camera swoops about as she talks, and we enter the Silent House (foolishly named, but artfully rendered). This is a haunted house movie, and Olsen's Sarah goes about the house with her father and uncle as they inspect broken down bits of the dilapidating house. All the windows are boarded up, and the interior of the house is black, although it's evening outside. Sarah encounters a strange girl on a bicycle outside, and then re-enters the house to a volley of noises. By this time her father is the only one in the house but her, and she pleads for him to go upstairs in order to inspect the noises. He yells from another room as she waits for him, and sees intruders in the house. She runs, and runs in a frantic, desperate, real way that is just another testament to her powers as an actress. We never get the sense that her foolish actions are just plain foolish, but foolish because she misjudged a certain situation at a certain time. The plausibility that Olsen lends is astonishing, and she commands the screen with incessant close-ups of her face for the full duration. The camerawork is similarly good, as the camera swoops about and focuses in and out in odd drops and falls. Then comes the Hollywoodness that was apparent even in SILENT HOUSE's trailer. In the trailer, we see the previews of the film, which are mostly good because the film is mostly good, but then, at the end of the trailer there's an awkward yelling and screeching and poor editing that rears its ugly head near the end of the film. Many critics found the ending problematic due to its ghastly twist, but I wasn't off-put by it, because I had followed Olsen for so long that I figured I could follow her a bit more. Instead, there's a bit of a jumpiness near the end that feels unwieldy. Furthermore, the film gained some criticism for supposedly pretending to be done in one take. This isn't so, and is obvious for watching the film that it doesn't do much else but add an effect as it was intended to. To treat it as some expectation or claim is ridiculous and a separate issue from the experience of viewing the movie.

★★★★ out of Five