When I saw Silent House available on Netflix I was reminded that I had never watched it before now. The fact that I wasn't even a fan of the original film it was based on had ensured that this was never a priority. But sometimes you are searching for a viewing option and decide to tick something off the list that has been on your radar for over a decade.
I wish I hadn't. As suspected, this was a simplistic and unnecessary remake of a film that was only ever remade because some people still stubbornly to accept that you can enjoy movies with subtitles.
Elizabeth Olsen is the lead this time around, playing Sarah, a young woman who becomes increasingly stressed and frightened, and disorientated, as she starts to feel terrorised in a lakeside home that she was due to help her father (John, played by Adam Trese) and uncle (Peter, played by Eric Sheffer Stevens) renovate. She also randomly encounters Sophia (Julia Chan, billed here as Julia Taylor Ross), someone who claims to be a childhood friend.
The main selling point of Silent House is the same selling point used for the original film. It's a horror movie that is all presented as if shot in one take. Just like the original film, however, it wasn't actually shot in one take. It's just presented that way. Other films have used the same gimmick, often to better effect, but this is a particularly poor experience, mainly because there's nothing more here to make the film worth your time.
Co-directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau (with Lau also adapting the original screenplay into something very similar, but subtly different), two people used to making use of a gimmick to hype up a movie, having previously given us Open Water, this is a sad step back for two people who have now, to date, not helmed another film in over a decade. I would assume that both Kentis and Lau went into this with an idea of making slight improvements to create something with more potential mass market appeal, but they completely drop the ball, arguably too focused on that "one-shot" USP to the detriment of everything else.
Olsen does well, emerging as the main reason to slog through this, but even her convincing performance isn't enough to make this actually worth your time. Trese and Stevens have limited screentime, and are used most effectively in the third act, but both do well enough with the material, and Chan tries her best with material that has her popping into the film in a way that will set off the spidey-sense of all but the most unobservant horror movie fans.
If you didn't like the original film then you won't like this. If you did like the original film then . . . you probably won't like this. It's a complete waste of time, although it's a bonus that the runtime is only about 86 minutes, and I wonder if Kentis and Lau have spent many years since this was released regretting the fact that they decided to sign on for it.
2/10
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