Ms. Silver Screen: Silent House

I’m much like my grandmother in the way that my ears get nervous just like hers do. Whenever “CSI: Miami” is turned up too loud on her television she gets incredibly irritable and uncomfortable and complains that her ears are nervous. What the hell is my point? My point is that SILENT HOUSE made my ears nervous. The house is just so… silent. But it’s that mind-numbing silence that leaves one uneasy, or in my case, with nervous ears.

This may be the shortest synopsis I’ll ever write. Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen) is tormented by an intruder in the vacation home that she and her father are fixing up to sell.

I can only handle so many elephants being dropped on pianos before my head starts to hurt. Loud noises that occur very suddenly are good and they are frightening indeed. However, there is a time and a place. And that does not mean every five minutes. This movie is 88 minutes of one consecutive shot. This makes for a lot of panning slowly around a room as we only see what Sarah sees. That’s a great way to scare the simpletons like me, but even I grew tired of it as the film crawled along.

The movie is not good. It is predictable and unlike Matt Pais of RedEye Chicago, I felt every one of those 88 minutes. I usually agree with everything Matt has to say, so this is really a first. I just wasn’t impressed. Other than the fact that I can see Elizabeth Olsen and her top-notch cleavage just blowing up and becoming a huge star, the movie was way too underwhelming for me. I just saw a really furry dog walk by the window of this coffee shop wearing shoes and I was more interested in that than I was in all of SILENT HOUSE. Yikes.