Day 112: Silent House

While helping her Dad (Adam Trese) and Uncle (Eric Sheffer Stevens) fix up their house before it’s sold, Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen) hears a noise coming from upstairs. That noise leads to lots of dashing about and silent screaming (I was actually mighty impressed with that, Olsen is great) and a horrible discovery.

There is barely any lighting to the film, it’s all torches and candles, which leads to feeling really claustrophobic and disoriented. And the juddery camera helps with that feel too. Sarah spends the majority of the time trying to escape from what she believes is an intruder type who has attacked her Dad. While they’re still checking out the house, her Dad stumbles across some polaroids and quickly hides them. Then later her Uncle does the same thing. At one point she hides beneath a snooker table and she hears the camera and a man trying to get a little girl to relax, but there’s another man there too. Turns out Sarah is remembering the abuse she suffered at the hands of her Dad and Uncle and the ‘intruder’ in the film was her all along. She realises towards the end what’s happening and that she's tied her Dad up but he manages to talk himself free and then he beats her with his belt. Well, that is until she kills him with a sledge hammer. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to cheer when that happens but I did.

The fact I could barely see anything for the majority of the film was driving me nuts and I hate the shaky camera shots. But the story was interesting and I liked that it wasn’t just a simple murderery-intruder story.

I’ve decided that since I take notes during the films but don’t necessarily talk about everything in the blog, I’ll put my notes in the comments. Just so you can see how I react to things as they happen. It mainly involves swearing, truth be told. And repeated use of the word ‘babe’.

7/10