Silent House (2011)

***

• I haven't watched this actually since it was in the theater. The purposed single take technique got a lot of attention at the time. It was, for the most part, praised by many who watched it in its initial run. I think I took it for granted in the theater. It particularly becomes an inventive technique when the film goes into psychological and hallucinatory territory as the ending draws near and "Sophie" has greater definition.
•  Elizabeth Olsen was in her early twenties and coming off Martha Marcy May Marlene so she was just tapping into her talents at this point. She's right at that wonderful age of young adulthood beauty and the camera couldn't follow a lovelier face almost exclusively.
• The repressed memories and daddy's true abhorrent nature certainly turned stomachs. The film finds creative ways to unveil past horrors and work them into Olsen's present. Little legs hanging off a pool table, and daddy's voice talking her into Polaroids certainly prove to be unsettling, emerging details which unearth a history of abuse spilling out of the "lost holes" Olsen speaks about to "Sophie*.
• Use of light and a house soon to be emptied and abandoned make for quite the aesthetic. Father, uncle and Olsen underway of a major undertaking involving packing and moving halted by the burial of memories emerging like skeletal hands prying open the casket to finally be free. It is the spooky unknown of what appears to be an intruder soon revealed to be closer to Olsen than she could possibly realize.
• On a premium channel at 9ish at night seems like the perfect home for this movie. It needs to sneak up on you...as repressed memories often unfortunately do.