Silent House

Silent House is Elizabeth Olsen's second film, which debuted at Sundance 2011.

## Plot Summary

A girl is trapped inside her family's lakeside retreat and becomes unable to contact the outside world as supernatural forces haunt the house with mysterious energy and consequences.

## Synopsis

A young woman named Sarah is staying at her family's dilapidated Victorian house in the countryside with her father John and her uncle Peter, helping them fix it to be put up for sale. After a petty argument between John and Peter, Peter leaves and drives into town for extra tools. Sarah meets a young woman named Sophia at the front door. Sophia claims to be one of Sarah's childhood friends, though Sarah does not remember her.

Soon after, Sarah panics when she hears John falling down the stairs. She tries to leave the house but all exits are blocked, and she hides from an unknown perpetrator. She finds John unconscious with a head wound and runs to the basement in search of the cellar door that leads outside. She finds a bed and other evidence that someone else has been living there, possibly squatters. She sees a figure searching for her and escapes out the cellar door.

Outside, she meets Peter, who has returned, and sees a young girl on the road who disappears. Peter and Sarah discover John's body missing in the house. When the power is cut off, the only light source available to them is the flash on a Polaroid camera. Through a series of camera flashes, Sarah sees the young girl and a man in the room. The power returns to reveal Peter missing. Sarah hides while two men take pictures, presumably pedophilic in nature, of an unseen girl. Sarah tries to shoot one of the men with Peter's gun, then hides in her room and begins to show signs of paranoia and psychosis. She experiences hallucinations of traumatic childhood events, including a bloodstain on the bed and the young girl in the bathtub with beer bottles and bloody water.

Frightened, Sarah flees and runs into Sophia. John, now conscious, is wrapped in plastic and sitting in the living room. Sophia gives Sarah a key to a box containing pedophilic pictures of Sarah as a little girl, implying that John sexually abused her. It is suggested that her recent interactions and hallucinations with the little girl and mystery attacker have been a traumatic repressed memory. Events at the house have caused this memory to reappear, and Sarah is now exacting her revenge. She has been confusing the events of her childhood with what she is doing now, likely due to dissociative identity disorder. She assaults John and Peter in her "intruder" mode while simultaneously wandering the house as a victim trying to escape.

The "intruder" drags Peter into the living room before it is revealed that it's actually Sarah herself. Sophia also turns out to be a figment of her imagination. John convinces Sarah to untie him, then whips her with his belt. Peter tries to stop him but John mocks Peter's pleas. As his back is turned, Sarah bludgeons his head with a sledgehammer, killing him. Peter begs for mercy and tells her he should have stopped the rape and abuse from the hands of John. Sarah leaves him and walks out silently.

## Cast

* Elizabeth Olsen as Sarah
* Adam Trese as John
* Eric Sheffer stevens as Peter
* Julia Taylor Ross as Sophia
* Adam Barnett as Stalking Man
* Haley Murphy as Little Girl

## Trivia

* Contrary to the marketing's claim that the film was shot in one uninterrupted take, the entire movie was actually shot to mimic one continuous real-time take, with no cuts from start to finish, as a result the time span of the film's plot is exactly 86 minutes. It was shot in roughly 10 minute segments then carefully edited to hide the cuts. This was confirmed in an interview by Elizabeth Olsen and the directors.
* Due to the unique nature of the film's presentation as a single take, the production crew ran into several technical issues while filming, mainly surrounding lighting issues and mobility around the house. Since filming was carried out in 12-15 minute takes, there were several occurrences where entire sequences had to be thrown out and re-done repeatedly due to lighting problems or missed cues.
* Elizabeth Olsen stated during an interview that she suffered from nightmares during filming simply because she would think of frightening things throughout the day.
* Elizabeth Olsen is in every single scene of the film and the story is told from her point of view, the film never shifts to another character's perspective.
* In terms of the film's unique presentation (being presented as a single take following one character), Laura Lau said: "This entire movie is this woman's experience; it is her reality [...] it is one character's point of view, it's exactly what she's experiencing." She also stated that several aspects of the film were purposefully left open for interpretation.
* This is a remake of the Uruguayan horror thriller film The Silent House (2010) which employed the same "continuous" take technique.
* Director Chris Kentis describes the film as an "experimental film".
* The film's plot begins roughly around 5:52 PM and ends at 7:18 PM.
* When it came down to casting for the role of Sarah, Chris Kentis and Laura Lau sought an actress with theatrical training due to the demanding nature of the filming process; Elizabeth Olsen was selected after impressing Kentis and Lau with her audition.
* Upon acquiring the house used for filming, the directors rewrote the script in order for it to be compatible with the restrictions and characteristics of the house.
* There is very little soundtrack present throughout the film, the most you hear of it is during the opening and closing credits.
* When writing the script for the film it ultimately resulted in only 55 pages which left the filmmakers concerned as to whether or not the timing would translate well during filming. In regards to this dilemma, director Laura Lau said, "We wondered whether it would time out properly because there are no cuts, there's no way to fix it in post it has to pace perfectly when you shoot it. So I think that was a huge challenge in terms of writing the script".
* Chris Kentis and Laura Lau faced countless challenges while attempting to capture all the natural sounds featured in the film. First off, Elizabeth Olsen had to be followed through the house by an entire crew of people (among them the cinematographer, camera operator, and supporting performers), all of whom made disturbances as they ran after Olsen through the house. Try as they did to muffle the noise of their feet and equipment using all manner of footwear and padding, nothing worked. Worse, the co-directors abandoned every attempt to fix these scenes using ADR, as they felt Olsen's performance in the recording booth wasn't nearly as convincing as the breathing, panicking and screaming she unleashed during the 3 week shoot. Instead, they had to subject the audio to rigorous editing and mixing. They also didn't rely on a lot of post-production Foley work in the studio since, again, the sounds captured in the actual house were more authentic. Then there was the house itself, which lay beneath the flight path of one of the busiest landing strips at LaGuardia Airport. Sound proofing the house was easy enough but, as a direct result, dampened the acoustics of the rooms.
* Even though this is the first film released starring Elizabeth Olsen, this was the third film she made after Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011).
* Rope (1948) and Russian Ark (2002), which are both also single take films, along with the home invasion thriller The Strangers (2008), all served as inspiration for this film.
* Film debut of Julia Chan (as Julia Taylor Ross) and Haley Murphy.
* One of the three films that received an "F" CinemaScore from audiences upon their release in 2012, along with The Devil Inside (2012) and Killing Them Softly (2012).
* The house used in the film was completely empty prior to filming and was kitted out exactly to the filmmakers' specifications.
* Laura Lau was immediately struck by the Uruguayan original when she saw it. She then saw it again and started writing the script immediately after that, referring to her memory of what she'd seen rather than a written screenplay.
* Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it was subsequently bought by Open Roads and Universal.
* There were many subtle clues dropped throughout the film that foreshadowed the revelation that everything that happened was in Sarah's imagination: Sarah attacked The Stalking Man with her uncle's handgun and missed all the shots in close range, this is because he was not real therefore she was shooting no one. Sophia claims to be her childhood friend yet she does not remember her because she is not real, also no one else ever meets Sophia except Sarah. - Sarah sees two pairs of legs from under the table while hiding despite there being only one "intruder", this is because these two men are actually her father and uncle taking child pornographic pictures of her in a repressed memory being displayed. This girl is also wearing the pink taffeta dress that Sarah was holding previously.
* While writing the script for the film, Laura Lau did extensive research on childhood sexual abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from psychological trauma.
* Although the film's marketing campaign, as well as the promotion for the original film The Silent House (2010), states that it is inspired by actual events, the specific events are not entirely known. According to Laura Lau, she and Chris Kentis were told, when approached to make the film, that it was based on an occurrence in Uruguay, though the details were left ambiguous: "When we were approached to do the remake, the first thing that we were told, aside from the fact that it was a single take, was that it was based on a true story, and that the true story had to do with something that happened in a village in Uruguay like, 60 years ago, where there were dead bodies and incest was involved".
* Only 3 living characters appear in the film (The Stalking Man and Sophia only exist in Sarah's imagination while the little girl is actually a younger Sarah) in only one location making Silent House (2011) one of the most minimalist films ever made.