La casa muda

Plot synopsis:
What isn't mentioned in the brief review is that the house is almost entirely dark and although some light is seen through the boarded up windows, it is not enough to illuminate anything within. Fluorescent lanterns, candles and a Polaroid-type camera provide the lighting. Importantly, Nestor, the owner who is selling the property, tells Laura and her father, who are there to do yard work and minor repairs on the house, that tiles are loose in places and it is dangerous to go upstairs. He tells them explicitly not to go upstairs. Laura and her father settle down to sleep so they can awaken early and start work on the grounds, then the house. Laura starts hearing noises, first outside, then upstairs. Laura has to try twice to fully awaken her father, who hasn't heard any noise. When he finally awakens, he tells her to stay put, that he will go upstairs and investigate the noise. Suspense steadily builds. You won't want to leave your seat. The language is Spanish, but there isn't much dialogue so subtitles really don't distract.

Tags: plot twist, revenge

Review:
There are few aspects the spectator should take into account before watching this film: it is an eight-thousand-dollar movie, filmed in a -seemingly- one continue shot,within four days and using a hand-held high-definition digital single-lens reflex camera.
That and then end scene...There are many holes in the plot, but from reading some of the reviews, i don't think many people got this film.
If you look for too much you'll be disappointed, but you shouldn't approach this film wanting to know all the answers.This film is all about the atmosphere it creates, and the 'shakey' camera another reviewer complained about it there so you can put yourself in the house and 'enjoy the ride' while watching the film.Yes, there is a bit too much of the film involving the main woman crying and walking about, and reacting and saying things no normal person would say in such situations, but watch the film again...
it makes more sense when you know the twist.This is a good film, and i'm dreading the inevitable American remake (prob) starring Hayden whatsherface from heroes.Not done in one shot, but impressive nether the less.
Laura stays with Néstor and they learn who the killer is.I had a great expectation and curiosity with "La Casa Muda", which is the Uruguayan candidate to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the Oscar 2012 and also presented in Cannes.
From its first scene, La Casa Muda establishes an excellent atmosphere of horror and anguish thanks to the rural locations and the efficient "hand-held" work which brings it a semi-documentary style and makes us to "live" the characters' point of view in order to experiment the horror.
But I could immediately "get into" the screenplay, and that became into an essential factor in order to emphasize the suspense which was achieved by this modest horror film, which might not be great, but which kept me very interested and entertained.I admire the audacity of making the whole movie in a single take; I guess that the new digital cameras make that feat possible without as many tricks as various years ago (even though the mention of an editor during the credits makes me to suspect a little bit of that).
As for the twist in the end, I found it interesting, but there are a few details which make it to feel a bit forced; anyway, I cannot deny I liked it, mainly because I did not see it coming.In conclusion, La Casa Muda is a very competent horror film which deserves a recommendation, at the same time that it proves that there is no need for many resources or special effects in order to keep us in suspense..
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.
There are very long scenes without breaking away , following the girl around this spooky house but then the film changes.
"The Silent House" is supposedly based on true events.However the most interesting aspect of the film is that "La Casa Muda" was made for roughly $6,000 and was filmed in one long continuous 72-minute take.The film delivers lots of gloomy and sinister atmosphere as the main character Laura wanders alone through the rooms and corridors of the titular silent house.Laura comes to this house with her father and suddenly terrifying things begin.Upstairs is a mess,don't go there."The Silent House" resembles a little bit Jaume Balaguero's smashing horror hit "Rec".I certainly enjoyed very gloomy atmosphere of "The Silent House".Unfortunately the characters are one-dimensional and the behavior of Laura is often questionable.Still "The Silent House" is worth checking out.7 photos out of 10..
But if you want real atmosphere, scares with depth, and a plot that keeps you in the dark at least for half the movie, then watch Insidious instead.
Even hanging cliché's on your characters to give them some sort of back story and endow them with SOMETHING an audience could POSSIBLY like is probably better than expecting anyone to care about wasting their time on this nonsense AWFUL FILM.
Doesn't lasts much and she feels like someone is touching her when she goes to investigate the house in the dark and gets scared and runs away into the woods but she doesn't get to far because she meets Nestor and they go back in the house but he will end the same way only this time we found out why and the author of the crime.It is a slow and boring movie, we see Laura walking thru the house with a lamp, it's not something very catchy, the only good thing about this is that it's short but even so I do not recommend you watch at a late hour in the night and not because it's something scary but there's a risk to suddenly grab sleep.This film is inspired by a real fact.
The Silent House is a great movie for fans who have seen hundreds of horror flicks, and look for that unique film that stands out for it's creepiness..
And the Polaroid flash sequence was one of the most frightening movie-watching experiences I've had in hundreds of horror flicks.I actually read one review on this site where the viewer didn't like it because it didn't give a clean answer to questions that arose from the plot twist.
Based on the supposedly true events that took place during the late 1940s in a small village in Uruguay although no evidences or records to validate these claims exist & shot in a manner so as to provide an illusion of being entirely filmed in one single take, The Silent House (also known as La Casa Muda) had a promising premise but is unfortunately marred by its own messy plot.The story of The Silent House follows Laura, who with her father settles down in a cottage they're supposed to renew in order to make it ready for sale.
An inexplicable sound in the upper floor wakes them up & before the night is over, they're torn apart by a dark secret that waits there.The sense of doom this film is able to generate in the first half is quite effective with expert use of minimum lighting, sound & unpredictability but it all goes for a toss once the director decides to gamble by introducing a major plot twist which turns out to be so lazy, uninspired & stupid that it eventually ends up destroying everything the film had build up to that point.And its claim of being shot in a single take also doesn't hold up too as the plethora of dark scenes & the limitation of camera used to shoot it gives out the moments where clever edits were masked.
The background score is a plus here, the dialogues are poor, character development is nearly non-existent but the effort from the leading lady is still commendable to quite an extent.On an overall scale, shot on a shoestring budget & coming from the film industry that doesn't have much of an international presence, The Silent House is a technically brilliant Uruguayan film that uses its horror elements very nicely & could've gone places if that plot-hole inducing twist hadn't existed.
However, as soon as her father goes for a nap, Laura becomes embroiled in horror and finds herself hunted.As for as atmosphere and cinematography goes, the single-camera adds and detracts at the same time.
Unlike other reviews I will not spoil it, but the number of holes it leaves basically undermines absolutely everything which went before it.It gives far too many questions, and there is one question alluded to in another review which, when asked on realisation of the twist, makes the film's first half genuinely stupid.This was a good idea - a single camera (if not a single shot) and a tight, chilling, claustrophobic horror with mild violence and plenty of unseen (and seen) chills.
(To get an idea, watch this short segment, shot with the same camera as "Silent house": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIeUGP1bD04 )Despite the dilapidated interiors, the movie feels modern.
The supernatural simply isn't to everone's liking.If you don't get into the movie visually ==within the first 5 minutes==, augmented by the great sound-work, it will definitely not deliver.Silent house arguably lacks a strong plot and character development, but makes up for it visually and by the sound-design.
Thirdly, despite it's apparent low budget, it is for the most part an effective horror/thriller.A father and daughter arrive at a remote house which they are set to clean up the following day.
She kills Nestor and the camera fades to black, before we are then presented with a serious of Polaroid photos that suggest an untoward relationship between Laura, her father and Nestor.The film is for the first two parts very effective, once you get past the in and out of focus camera work outside of the house.
The return of the owner Nestor and their return into the house reignites the sense of fear and we get glimpses of what may be the cause and there is a clever use of the flash from the Polaroid camera which literally illuminates an otherwise blacked out space.Then the plot seems to twist and suggests that it is Laura who has killed her father and Nestor, the revenge she has taken for the fact her child is dead.
The only part about the film that is based on real events is the fact that two people were found murdered on a house in Uruguay.
It lacks an interesting story, the script is terrible, the actors performs some of the most stupid dialogs I have heard on any film (Example: Would you like to go to Granma's house?
YES YOU KNOW, HE IS DEAD, YOU JUST SAY YOU DON'T KNOW BECAUSE OTHERWISE THERE WOULD BE NO REASON TO GO BACK TO THE BLOODY HOUSE!) The argument is stretched mindlessly just to make this possibly acceptable short film story into a long feature film (resulting in like half an hour of a woman walking through a house whining) There are stupid jump scares like the scene in which, for no good reason, the woman goes to investigate what is over the fridge and some birds came flying out from behind some cans into her face (a variation on the Scary Jumping Cat scene we all know and hate by know)Another thing that bothered me was the unnecessary shaky camera.
In the film one of the main points is the fact that these two old men take young women to have sex into the house and took pictures of those women...
I know this film is set in the 40s (so the character can't be expected to know what to do in a scary situation like we do from watching so many scary movies), but there is a fine line between 'being scared stiff' and 'common sense'.
For a $6000 budget, filmed in the country of Uruguay, and allegedly filmed in a single shot in the course of 4 days, The silent house seemed like quite the contender for the horror films of 2010 .To begin with the camera effects seem to have the 'marmite' affect on most people, you love it or you hate it, and in my case I love them, you see the shaky camera effects make you feel as if you are there amongst the horror of the mysterious murders/ circumstances.
Although the camera offers us a 3rd person view of the main protagonist through out, until the very end, this somehow tells us the story in her eyes, which I think was done pretty well.Otherwise the real downer of this film is the story line, this wasn't based on a true story, it was based on the fact that 2 people were found dead, this is merely a way to make films slightly more scary, For example do you really think there was a monster in Europe, and it's master called Frankenstein?
This is one of the weapons in story tellers arsenal, it helps keeps you on the edge of your seat, and keeps you wondering at night, but I digress the story is cheap and cliché, though the film can split into 2 parts, The first part that keeps us on edge after the suspicious death of Laura's father after that comes the second part which is a downwards spiral of despair, and definitely kept me wondering of why I was watching the film, but something kept me glued to it and perhaps that was the fact that I wanted to see how it ended, to see if this was a cheap copy of Paranormal activity or just an alternative to Shrooms without the 'Shrooms.
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.
-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 daughter Laura, (the main focal point in the film) starts to hear some noise coming from the rooms above.
If the film loses its way in the final act, bringing in an unnecessary cross generic "twist", then we can be consoled by the fact that this is for the most part an effective and at times chilling, piece of micro budget horror..
Unfortunately, this results in Wilson being attacked by someone, or something, so Laura, who is now in fear for her and her father's lives, starts to look for a way to escape the house before they fall victim to what or whoever is in the house with them.The Silent House is most definitely what I call a thinker of a movie and if you don't pay attention to it right from the start then you will struggle to understand what goes on.
If you're expecting a supernatural type of movie like that then you will be sorely disappointed, but in saying that, it's still a pretty creepy & very atmospheric movie.It's also very, very cleverly edited to seem like it was filmed in one continuous shot and the illusion works superbly.
For me, that added to the suspense of the film because there were no obvious cut-away scenes, or anything to interrupt the flow of the movie, and for a movie that only cost about $6000 to make, that makes it even more impressive.The Silent House will not be to everyone's taste, but if you enjoy a good creepy thriller, and one where you have to use your brain to put things together, then you might enjoy this..
Claims to have been filmed in one continuous 79 minute shot(except for brief post-credit sequence).A girl and her father take on a job at a remote uninhabited house in the country/woods.
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.
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.
The story is about Laura and her father who have been hired to fix up the facade of an old, rundown house and having to spend the night in the old, empty house, but the house has a dark secret...What was really impressive about this movie was that it was shot in one long take, without cuts and editing, that really impressed me.
If you like movies that leave you with a lasting impression and something to think about, then you should definitely watch "The Silent House"..
You can also take the film's title as a reference to her cutting out the tongue of her father and the house's owner when she kills them (as seen when she drags him away at the end of the movie).Secondly, the movie never claimed to be filmed in one shot.
It is only supposed to have the appearance of a one-shot film in order to draw the audience into a real time encounter during the events of what happens in the house.
It starts off as your standard horror movie: scared girl in a creepy house with weird things going on around her.
Disappointing, Boring and No Scares At All. The Silent House (2010) * 1/2 (out of 4) Laura (Florencia Colucci) goes with her father (Gustavo Alonso) to an old house where the two are going to work on fixing it up.