Laura and her father arrives at a secluded cottage which they are going to repair, as the owner wants to put the house out for sale. Having planned to spend the night inside the house, with its unstable and unsafe upper level and windows that are nailed shut, they soon experience that things do (of course) go wrong. A radio starts playing a sinister melody, and after Laura turns it off, her father goes upstairs to check on an other noise. Laura hears a commotion from upstairs, and shortly afterwards she finds her father’s murdered body downstairs. In a state of grief and fear, she tries to escape from the house but someone has locked all the doors. As she moves around in the dark house, trying to find an exit, more sinister things happen around her…
The Silent House (La Casa Muda) is a Uruguayan horror movie directed by Gustavo Hernández and made with a tiny budget of $6,000. The film is made to look like it was filmed in real time, in one continuous 88 minute take, but the real story is that it was actually shot over four days. Despite not being filmed in one take, the length of the takes are still rather impressive though. The film is based on what is supposed to be real events that took place in 1944 in a village in Uruguay, where two brutally tortured men’s bodies, missing their tongues, were found in an old farmhouse. In that regard, one could consider The Silent House as a typical gimmick-film, with the supposedly “single-take” filming as well as the supposedly “true story” (which there is no actual information about to be found anywhere online, it seems). As for the single-take gimmick, there’s been numerous other films going for the same thing while having in fact been edited to appear that way. Most notably, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope from 1948. Movies that rely heavily on gimmicks are often off to a troublesome start, though, and not surprisingly the movie’s reception was quite varied.
The Silent House is mostly leaning heavily on atmosphere, where inside the house the only light comes from two halogen lamps and some candles. The darkness in the house makes the viewer look for clues as to what might be hiding there, as the protagonist keeps cautiously sneaking around. It’s mostly a psychological thriller, with bits of haunted-house clichés like a haunting melody playing, a “don’t go upstairs” caution, and spooky imagery. Despite there not being much of a plot, it still manages to create a very tense atmosphere but the problem is still the pacing, which makes the film a little dull at times and some scenes dragging on for a little bit too long.
Overall, The Silent House is an atmospheric and different little horror film, albeit a little dull at times and offering a twist in the end which does feel a little confusing and ends up leaving more questions than answers.
There was also an english-language remake made in 2011, called Silent House.
Director: Gustavo Hernández
Writers: Oscar Estévez, Gustavo Hernández, Gustavo Rojo
Original title: La casa muda
Country & year: Uruguay, 2010
Actors: Florencia Colucci, Abel Tripaldi, Gustavo Alonso, María Salazar
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1646973/
Ellison Oswalt is a true crime writer who moves into a new home with his wife and two children. What he has not told his family prior to moving into the house, however, is that an entire family was murdered there by hanging, and his intention is to write a book about this case. This is something he does in the hopes of regaining his lost fame, as his latest works weren’t very popular and he’s desperate for a new success. There was also a little girl who disappeared following the murders, and he hopes to learn more about her fate so he can include this mystery in his novel. Upon exploring the attic of the house, he finds a box with several reels of Super 8 footage, which are simply labeled as “home movies”. Using the projector which was also located in the attic, he discovers that the films are footage of several families being murdered, all of them filmed by an unseen camera operator. Upon investigation these cases he finds similarities that makes him suspect that both the murders in the house he now inhabits, and the ones from the Super 8 footage, are connected in a sinister way, and dates all the way back to the 1960’s…
A team of investigators, consisting of Deacon (a religious brother who is some i kind of skeptic – however that makes sense) Gray (an englishman who is both a layman and a technology expert) and Father Mark (who is, of course, sent by the Vatican to team up with these guys in order to investigate reports of supernatural activity in an old thirteenth century church. The guys arrive at the old church, where they set up their recording equipment and stuff, Ghost Adventures-style. The local priest believes that the things happening inside the church is a miracle, until he later starts questioning what is happening as being something completely different – and leaps to his death from the bell tower. After this, the inhabitants in the village become hostile towards the investigators…
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Scarlett is a young scholar who continues her dead father’s search for the philosopher’s stone (a legendary alchemical substance discovered by Nicolas Flamel, which supposedly has the powers to turn metals into gold or silver, and granting eternal life). She travels to Paris, and together with her ex boyfriend George and Benji, the cameraman, they go to the Catacombs of Paris. Scarlett had earlier found the “Rose Key”: an artifact that has some codes which, upon using them to solve a riddle on Flame’s headstone, gives them some coordinates that points to an area inside the Catacombs. But of course, this specific area proves to be off-limits. With the help of a stranger, they get in contact with a guide, Papillon, who will take them to an off-limits entrance. Crawling through a narrow tunnel, they are pushed forward as it collapses, and they end up in an area with a blocked tunnel. Finding no other way to leave, they decide to break through the tunnel…and what they find further inside is more hellish than they could have imagined.
The New South Wales State government plans to recycle the huge amounts of trapped water in a network of abandoned train tunnels. However, these plans suddenly come to a halt, and publicly no one is ever told why. Rumors are spreading, like how homeless people using the tunnels end up going missing. This brings a young journalist, Natasha, to start an investigation into what she thinks is some kind of government cover-up. She and her crew decide to enter the tunnels and look for answers, but after being refused entry by a security guard, they do of course find an alternative entrance into the place. While exploring the tunnels, they start hearing strange noises through the audio headphones, and when one of the crew members go missing they eventually realize that they might not be alone in these deep, dark tunnels.
Nathan Gardener and his family moves to his late father’s farm somewhere in rural New England, in the hopes of living a quiet life and escape the hustle and bustle of the city. Just when they start to settle in, a meteorite crashes into their yard which emits an otherworldly color (a color out of space). One of the children (Jack) is traumatized by the event, and seems to be affected in strange ways. He becomes obsessed with the well in the garden and claims he’s got a “friend” there. Strange flowers and plants starts growing, animals suffer grotesque mutations, and the Gardener family’s life transforms into a colorful nightmare.
