The Hollywood adaptation of the 2010 Uruguayan horror film La casa muda, Silent House is a shot-for-shot remake that even applies the same technical gimmick of the original in order to advertise itself as a film shot in one continuous take and while there are a couple of new elements added in the story, it fails to rectify the biggest plot hole of its source material.
The story of Silent House follows Sarah, a young woman who's at her family vacation house with her father & uncle and is helping them clean the property and make it ready for sale. While her uncle is out for an errand, she hears strange noises, followed by an attack on her father after which she attempts to get out of the house but finds herself trapped inside and terrorised by a possible intruder.
Written, co-produced & co-directed by Laura Lau, with added directional effort coming from Chris Kentis, Silent House is quite a tedious film to sit through considering that I've already seen the original and while that film suffered from numerous shortcomings of its own, what sucks about Silent House is that it ends up making the very same mistakes all over again as if no one cared to question the whole absurdity of its major plot twist.
The images captured by its ever-moving camera is edited to give the illusion of an unbroken take from start to finish but the gimmick fails to add or elevate the tension. At 87 minutes, the film still feels a tad too long as only one thing keeps happening in the whole movie. The only effort comes from Elizabeth Olsen who carries the whole film on her own & tries to do whatever she can but unfortunately Olsen doesn't have enough material to work with here.
On an overall scale, Silent House is an unnecessary remake of an already mediocre original that fails to take the advantage of the opportunity it had to improve on the shortcomings of that Uruguayan chiller. The scares are quite predictable, that major plot twist in the final act is as illogical as before, its one shot technique is quite useless, it is longer than it needs to be, and is barely held together by Olsen's committed performance. Another addition in the long list of pathetic remakes churned out by Hollywood, Silent House is worth skipping.
