By CHRISTOPHER KELLY
By CHRISTOPHER KELLY
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas
The horror movie “Silent House” unfolds in real time, and is designed to look like a single, unbroken shot, with the camera trailing behind the characters, winding up and down stairwells, into the darkness, and then back into light. Alfred Hitchcock employed a similar device in “Rope” (1948), photographing the movie in just 10 shots, ranging from 4 1/2 to 10 minutes in length. More recently, Russian director Alexander Sokurov staged a dazzling, 96-minute journey through St. Petersburg’s Hermitage in “Russian Ark” (2002), shot with a Steadicam in one jaw-droppingly fluid take.
But technical artistry only carries you so far — it doesn’t matter how many hoops the cameraman jumps through if what’s on the screen isn’t especially interesting to begin with. Directed by husband-and-wife team Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, from a screenplay by Lau, “Silent House” trots out a steady stream of haunted-mansion cliches, underdeveloped characters and “scary” thuds on the soundtrack. The filmmakers seem to have been so besotted with the idea of creating an elaborate visual stunt that they forgot they were supposed to also be telling a story. (As it turns out, the movie is also something of a cheat — some clever editing disguises the fact that it actually consists of multiple long takes weaved together to look like one.)
“Silent House” takes place in a remote vacation home, where Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen) has come with her father (Adam Trese) and uncle (Eric Sheffer Stevens) to finish renovations before the place is put on the market. But strange things are afoot, including the requisite creepy noises from the attic, and a mysterious girl (Julia Taylor Ross) who keeps turning up, claiming to be one of Sarah’s childhood friends. Inevitably Sarah begins to wonder if she might be losing her mind — and, if you think you’ve seen this all before, that’s because you have, in “Repulsion,” “The Shining,” “The Others” and many other far superior titles.
Kentis and Lau previously made the gut-wrenching “Open Water” (2004), about a couple stranded in the ocean as sharks begin circling; it’s a horror movie that taps into our worst existential fears of a godless universe where there’s nobody out there who can save us. But Silent House (which is based on the 2010 Uruguayan film The Silent House, which purports to be based on a true story) generates no sense of deeper dread.
Despites Olsen’s commendable performance, Sarah’s anxiety and possible psychosis is just another cheap trick in a movie that’s bankrupt of original ideas. Before long, the only thing worth paying attention to in Silent House is the camerawork, and only then just to catch the hidden edits — a sure sign that style has trumped substance.