Sarah, dad John (Adam Trese) and Uncle Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens) enter the house. It's daylight, but window boards make it pitch black inside. They carry bright lamps. Left alone, she begins to hear things. Tappings, squeakings, scuttlings, breathings, creakings, moanings, clickings. This house embodies a full rhythm section.
Creeping through the dark, she finds her dad again, and then Uncle Peter leaves for a while and things get really heavy. The secret of the plot is revealed to be unexpectedly fraught, and a surrealistic element enters with bodies in bathtubs and a toilet mounted vertically on a wall and dripping a stream of blood.
My attention was held for the first act or so. Then any attempt at realism was abandoned, and it became clear that the house, and the movie containing it, were devices to manufacture methodical thrills. The explanation, if that's what it was, seemed contrived and unconvincing. To some degree, the ending of a film should seem vaguely necessary, don't you think?
Truth in reviewing: I saw the film with a sneak preview audience. Most of my fellow audience members sat quietly, but there was a cadre of girlfriends three rows down and on the right who shrieked on cue and then laughed — which is proper, because that's why people go to these thrillers, to be amused that they were frightened. If that's the case with you, "Silent House" delivers, although you may be left suspecting there's more to the mold in the walls than they're telling us.
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