Silent House

SILENT HOUSE (2012) - March 24, 2012
A really well made film about a young girl who returns home to help her father pack up their spooky old house (with all the windows boarded up, just to make it spookier); spooky shenanigans ensue.  The film consists of one long take (or at least it's designed to look that way), which sounds gimmicky but which actually works fairly well.  The film establishes a fairly palpable sense of tension and dread almost right from the start, and pretty much does not let up for the entire film.  The use of the single take actually helps, in this case, to elevate the tension, because the audience knows that the tension cannot let up -- there's no cutting away to a new scene.  The film is almost a one-woman show, with Elizabeth Olsen spending much of the film wandering around the house alone.  Olsen proves to be pretty much perfect in the role; much of the film consists of close-ups of her terrified face, and she is so convincingly terrified that it actually makes the audience more scared.  It's a pretty great performance.  ***1/2