The Silent House

Dir Gustavo Hernandez

Starring: Florencia Colucci, Gustavo Alonso, Abel Tripaldi

Synopsis:

Uruguay, sometime recently. Laura, a quiet shy young girl, and her father Wilson have been asked by Wilson’s friend, Nestor, to tidy up his old family farmhouse so it can be sold. The place is outside of town on the edge of a forest and pretty remote, as well as a bit run down with no light or power. Laura and Wilson get there late, and after some weirdly stilted chit chat with Nestor, settle down in the living room to spend the night before starting work the next day. In a big isolated creaky house. With only a couple of torches. A sudden noise from an upstairs room startles Laura, she rouses her father who (eventually) goes to investigate…

Some of you may have heard that this movie was shot in one continuous 78 minute take. If so be aware that remarkable as this is, it is not the only remarkable thing about this movie.

Apparently the events portrayed are based loosely on an actual case reported sometime in the forties, although as you’ll realise when you see the film there was a lot of ‘Poetic License’ involved in the screenplay.

From the start Director Hernandez aims to build with painstaking slowness a nerve-shattering suspense piece. Laura and her father approach the house slowly through the quiet uninhabited scrubland and waist high bush. Climbing over fences and scuffing through foliage in companionable silence. The music is simple and soulful and everything feels slow and eerie, and everything goes towards building the feeling that no one else is around.

When Néstor arrives in his SUV to agree with Wilson on the terms of the work it simply serves to remind us how far they all seem from the world this car is from.

Florencia Collucia’s performance is so natural from the start. She is perfect as a quiet shy young girl. Her odd manner and studied silence are compelling in the early movements of the film, and her performance builds effortlessly, moving from startled and nervous through to terrorised and frantic with perfect ease, and always so believable. Wilson is perfectly understated as her stern and dismissive father, and the two create a most realistic difficult father daughter relationship on which the emotion of the later narrative hangs well.

In terms of direction, the increasing suspense and violence of the movie is well captured. If this was indeed one master, then the choreography was perfectly arranged as well. Most of the story is confined to the shadowy interior of the farmhouse, and the confined nature of the space is used well, but so is distance, a couple of memorable shots feature action glimpsed at the far end of hallways or bedchambers.

When some horrifying other is given distance to advance slowly whilst our protagonist is paralysed in fear, it really works for me. A series of masterful ‘jump’ moments keeps this film rattling along after the sedate opening, and when things take a turn for the supernatural your mind races to comprehend and second guess exactly what on earth happened in the crumbling house and who was to blame, and I think it unlikely to happen before the final reel.

I was lucky enough to see this in a screening with Mikeoutwest and we agreed that while a reasonably satisfying ending, questions remained unanswered which kept me wondering for a couple of days, but in a good way.

Verdict

A truly interesting and innovative horror/ thriller with moments of stand out artistry. Observe the smoothness with which the shot moves from ‘of subject’ to ‘Point of View’ so smoothly without the benefit of cutting.

Admirable work, and also my first Uruguayan film, I do not know if there is much Horror coming out of the Uruguayan industry right now but if there is, I’ll be checking it out.

7 out of 10 (Sulaco)

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