The Silent House (2010)

It's one thing to deceive the viewer in order to throw him off the track, to give him false leads, in order to present him with the end-twists that he couldn't/shouldn't anticipate. It's something entirely else to lie and cheat the viewer, such as is the case in this muda casa. Lying to the viewer is a cop-out, a desperate ploy that takes place when the writer and the director cannot think of an intelligent/logical way to set us up for the plot-twist. And yet, only half-way through the movie, I had strong suspicions that Laura herself is the killer. How did I reach this conclusion, given the writer's lies and the director's pathetic manipulation? Simple logic: the movie had both apparitions AND a real-life murderer, something that isn't quite possible, i.e. the muda casa at first offers us a genre-meshing, almost paradoxical situation. A ghost and a real killer? I consider these two to be mutually exclusive in a horror film. (Though it undoubtedly could work in a ZAZ comedy.) This ghost/killer contradiction helped me reach the only explanation that was left, that the damn muda casa must have neither: no ghosts and no hidden killer. Hence: homely Laura must be the murderer.So in spite of the lies and the shoddily set-up story, I still managed to predict the ending – and way before we were given the first hints that something odd is going on. (I am patting myself on the back as I write.) Perhaps remembering "Shrooms" helped. It's not as if this movie has a terribly original plot-twist.We are cheated/lied to in the most blatant way possible: Laura is shown as the victim, while totally erroneous/fallacious scenes that could not possibly implicate her in the murders fill the screen. The only way this moronic premise could have worked, without being stupid, would have been to show ALL the early events from Laura's perspective i.e. literally from her viewpoint, as if she were holding a camcorder. This approach would have meant that we almost never get to see her (except when she looks in a mirror), which would have been an added bonus since the actress playing Laura is so damn unattractive. So everyone wins.Alas, the film-makers had decided to treat the viewers as utter cretins instead, hence the swindle. They hoped that the crucial revelation that Laura is insane would somehow explain and justify their own cheating/lying, and all of the BS scenes early on; scenes that, with hindsight, mean absolutely nothing. Well, they failed.The main premise/set-up is not the only source of rubbish in LCM. We also have a series of stupid things going on once Laura "escapes" (ha ha) from the not-so-silent house. She just happens to run into Nestor, her former lover, who calmly decides to inspect the house in spite of seeing her covered in blood and in utter panic. So calling the police first was not an option? OK, you could argue that he didn't want to call the cops because of the photos that are in there. Fine; then how about at least going up to the cellar with some sort of weapon? Nestor finds his ex covered with blood, in hysterics, sobbing about an attack, and yet Nestor goes up there, with no weapons, never even considering calling someone for help, and very predictably gets attacked. It's absolutely ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is the scene when he leaves Laura in the car in order to briefly inspect the house - "BRIEFLY" being the key word here. He returns after just 18 seconds (!) with the following words: "there is nobody inside the house". That must have been one helluva lightning-fast house-inspection. 18 seconds for a house that big? I would think that an entire football team would need at least a few minutes to check the house completely for any potential intruders.More nonsense. When Nestor goes up to the cellar, he finds neither a body nor any blood. He even makes a comment that the cellar hadn't been visited in a while. This implies that Laura must have killed her Dad downstairs – and yet where is the blood? Where is the body? Nestor should have seen either the body or some blood (or both) downstairs. Laura had no time to clean up the mess. Or did she? Of course, I forget that the writers and the director are LIARS and CHEATS, so perhaps Laura did clean up the living-room before Nestor's arrival in some ulterior universe in which the ACTUAL plot was going on – while we (the suckered viewers) were watching the FAKE VERSION of events, the stuff that never happened, the moronic-universe version of events, such as Laura sobbing, running away from a hairy arm going for her neck, the ghosts, and that crucially phony scene in which her father appears to be murdered upstairs in the cellar while Laura was downstairs.To make matters worse, the movie has such an ugly – modern – look: it is an almost uni-colour film with nothing but shades of putrid green. (Horror) movies used to look beautiful/natural once upon a time in the 70s/early-80s, but nowadays most horror films are shoved through filters, made to look incredibly unappealing as if this ugliness somehow magnifies the horror. It doesn't; it simply makes the movie look ugly.It's never even hinted why her two victims killed her daughter, nor is it even entirely clear whether they did! (Remember: she's nuts.) This renders the story even more pointless.Furthermore, this damn boring casa drags on. The intro alone lasts an entire 17 minutes (an eternity in the horror genre), during which absolutely nothing happens. All we have in those 17 minutes is a crappy-looking actress and a movie that looks like a bird poo-pooed on it. I can find an ugly woman and bird-droppings myself, I don't need a movie for that.

what i was expecting hearing a movie from uruquay, after a lot of great Spanish horror movies was good enough, that Americans made a remake of it.so i sat down watching the movie and tried to get what this movie wanted to deliver. but just after starting the movie i felt kind of awkward about the girl's weird behaviour, the endless long shooting of film when there is nothing happening and a terrible shaky camera. sure here some people would now say, that this is the beauty of that movie . but if there is no story, no depth, no activity at all in a movie and you do all that, then you just created the most boring movie you can imagine.. when the girl in the movie heard voices, saw her father being murdered, saw her father's position changed, saw the killer or meets her affair her reaction is completely unnatural and failed to deliver any authentic feeling to the viewer. AH of course now is a good time to say that i am just too stupid to get the ending and that she actually killed everyone. you people are so easy to manipulate if that is so... i don't know how many movies i've watched with the same twist to clean up a bad movie and make you think that you are the idiot and not the people who created the movie. even she killed them her emotions would look a lot different.well back to the movie: -girl walking around in the house in slow motion, having an incredible interest in looking at every piece of equipment. -girl's father died and his body is changing rooms many times in the movie. -girl walking around in the house in slow motion, having an incredible interest in looking at every piece of equipment. -girl happily found the key to get outside -girl running outside and sees a creepy girl -girl happily meets her friend (later you know her affair) -girl can not answer the question of "where is your father?" and says "i don't know", later to be revealed to be the "brilliant" twist of this unworthy movie. -girl doesn't want to go back to the house but the guy is eager and doesn't care about the blood on her dress -then inside the house the girl is happy to be back in the house and starts to space up looking at house equipment. -girl's affair suddenly disappeared -girl finds her affair and he pretends to be dead -girl is actually starting to talk and we are all happy knowing that the whole thing we saw is just pure fiction of the girl's mind .......endacting: just a really stupid idea to give a amateur actress a role where she has to act out her emotions non-stop through a whole movie, where she completely failed.screenplay: in general just a guy holding a camera and walking behind the girl the whole movie.dialogue: senseless and stupid even if you are happy with the great twist.atmosphere: sometimes good then again just boringsound: actually pretty nice and mild use of music and sounds

The Spanish have been leading the way in horror movies in recent years. Rec and the Orphanage are two examples of great horror's which makes it all the more disappointing that The Silent House is such a poor film.This the story of Laura and her dad , Wilson who are asked to do up an old house but it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary house and that things are not what they seem.The best thing about this film is that it's only 80 minutes long. I don't know if i would have got to the end if it was a normal length film. This starts really well . It is suspenseful and has the feel of a Blare Witch type movie. There are very long scenes without breaking away , following the girl around this spooky house but then the film changes. It starts to become confused ( as i was) and far too clever for it's own good and instead of becoming a good old fashioned haunted house move it changes direction - for the worse. I was annoyed by this film because quite clearly it never had an ending to start with. The director snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory.

I have read many different reviews for this excellent film, but I am yet disappointed for one and only reason: No one got this film actually. I had to watch the movie twice, just to realize one thing. The movie begins with the end and ends with the beginning (when I am referring to "the end", I mean of course the scenes after the credits). For all of you that have already seen the movie, let me point you out some of the evidence of what I am saying. First of all, at the start of the movie, when Laura is lying in the chair opposite to her father, she notices a book under the table and opens it. The book is an album, with three Polaroid photos. If you look closely you can see that the first and last one, is her father and Nestor lying dead in the chair were she put them after killing them. That means, that when she was lying there, she had already committed the murders and all the other things at this point, (e.g. the fact she sees her father alive), are just in her imagination. The clothes she is wearing when she is committing the murders, are different from those that she is wearing in the end of the movie. In my opinion, the end is an event that takes place chronically before she arrives at the house, with her father, because she is wearing the same clothes with those in the first scene of the movie. During the whole movie you can watch scenes that go back and forth, such as the scene when she enters the kitchen exploring and she finds a can dropped down and in the very next scene the can is found on a shelf above the fridge. When she finds for the first time Nestor, lying down hurt, she goes out and Nestor opens his eyes and Laura comes in the room again. I also believe for that part that the scenes are kind of mixed up, with the second scene to come chronically first and the first one to come second. Some other points throughout the whole film, make it seem that way, and I do not know if I am right or wrong.That is my point of view, and I discussed it with my friends who have also seen the movie and we quite agree with each other. In conclusion, that is the reason I found that film excellent and a very clever one. Worth watching it!!!