george.schmidt Review of Silent House

Silent House (2011)

Fairly effective chiller ; Olsen embodies to a finely tuned pitch of believable angst and genuine terror.

[7/10 · 24 February 2012]

SILENT HOUSE (2012) ** Elizabeth Olsen, Adam Trese, Eric Sheffer Stevens, Julia Taylor Ross, Haley Murphy. Fairly effective chiller with Olsen as a young woman in a sort of homecoming who is helping her father get a piece of real estate ready for an impending sale and finds herself trapped when a home invasion occurs (or does it?) The real-time one-take gimmick employed by intrepid married filmmakers Chris Kentis and Laura Lau (who adapted from a film by Gustavo Hernandez) is rather smoothly transferred with impeccable camera-work by Igor Martinvoic yet the premise taxes the nerves (and not in the way it should i.e. gooseflesh/hair-on-end spookiness) by the story's (anti)climax that upends psychological horror instead of its ghost-story approach of things-that-bump-in-the-night in spite of its leading lady's full-on embodiment to a finely tuned pitch of believable angst and genuine terror.