1. Plot

2. Production

3. Release and reception

4. See also

5. References

6. External links

Plot

Laura (Florencia Colucci) and her father Wilson (Gustavo Alonso) arrive at a cottage in a secluded area in order to repair it. The owner, Nestor (Abel Tripaldi), will soon put the house on sale. Beforehand, he tells them that the floor on the second level is unstable and that it is unsafe to go upstairs. They intend to spend the night in the house in order to start repairs the following morning. Because the windows are nailed shut, the house's interior is dark even during the day.

First of all, Laura finds a radio playing a haunting melody which she turns off. Shortly after, she hears a sound in the upper floor of the house. Her father goes up to see what is going on while Laura remains downstairs. Suddenly, Laura hears what appears to be combat and is immediately worried. Moments later, she finds her father restrained and murdered in a room downstairs. She starts to cry and hugs his body, getting his blood on her in the process.

Laura then attempts to flee but someone has locked the doors and she cannot open the windows either. Armed with a reap hook and a lamp, she stumbles through the house in order to find a way outside. As she re-enters the living room where she and her father were sleeping before, she notices that her father's dead body has been moved into the chair which he slept in the previous night and that someone has placed a puppet on him.

Suddenly, another melody plays. This time, the music originates from the upper floor. It is only now that Laura goes upstairs where she finds a blood tray and (again) another radio and turns it off. As she hears footsteps, she hides under a table and turns her lamp off. An unknown person armed with a knife and a lamp enters the room, but Laura remains unnoticed so the person leaves. Hereafter, Laura manages to find the key to the front door and runs downstairs. She hears that someone is following her, but is able to unlock the door and to run outside.

After manically running through the grove in front of the house, she stops on the road leading to the house. In the background, her pursuer approaches holding a lamp. However, in this moment Laura is almost run over by Nestor (the owner) who is riding his pickup truck and who was on his way to the house in the middle of the night. The pursuer's lamp is shut down immediately. Although Laura's clothes are covered in blood and the fact that she tells Nestor about the attack, the latter does not seem convinced and insists on searching the house.

As both enter the house, Laura admits that her father was attacked upstairs to which Nestor accuses her for having disobeyed his orders not to go upstairs. They mount to the second floor where, all of a sudden, Nestor disappears through a door and Laura's lamp is shut down. She gets a hold of an old Polaroid camera and manages to light the room up for a split-second due to the camera's flash each time she takes a photo. In one of the photos, Laura sees a little girl in a white dress, in the last one, a young man runs towards her and tries to stab her.

Laura jumps up and flees to the next room to avoid getting stabbed. The room is well-lit and no one seems to follow her. In that room, she discovers plenty of photos on a wall and in a baby buggy. They mainly show Nestor and a woman in underwear.

After this, Laura goes back downstairs where she finds Nestor. He is also restrained in the same manner her father was and lying on the ground seriously injured. She bends over and they kiss each other. Then, they have a brief conversation: Nestor tells Laura that he loves her and confesses he only called her father for help in order to see her. Laura mentions that she found his pictures and asks him: "Do you miss her? Do you want to tell her something? She is here now". In a mirror, the little girl in the white dress is visible again for a mere second and appears to be in the room. During the conversation, Laura becomes more and more aggressive and finally shouts at Nestor. Eventually, she says, "You two killed my baby. You're going to die in the manner that my father did." As it comes to an end, Laura drags Nestor to the living room and sits him in the chair once she's removed her father's corpse from it. After putting the mysterious puppet on him, she kills him using her reap hook. The ending credits begin to play showing photos of the past with Laura, Nestor and her father. The film continues showing Laura burning the pictures and walking through the forest and suddenly meeting up with a small child named Sophie. Sophie is the daughter that she had with Nestor, and they walk together through the forest hand in hand promising to start a new life together. The camera zooms in at Laura and then zooms out showing that Laura is only holding Sophie's doll, implying that Laura has lost all touch with reality and disappears into the distance.

Production

Release and reception

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 16 May 2010, a Director's Fortnight selection. That summer and fall it was screened on the festival circuit at the Melbourne International Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, and the Stockholm International Film Festival. Its first theatrical release began on 27 January 2011 in Argentina. This was followed by a 4 March release in Uruguay, where it was produced. It received mixed reviews after its 8 April 2011 release in the UK, with critics generally praising the director's technical achievements, but finding the overall story line unimpressive. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian praised the film, writing: "This is a smart, scary film and a technical tour de force with its own skin-crawling atmosphere of fear."^[4]

The film was selected as the Uruguayan entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards,^[5][6] but it did not make the final shortlist.^[7]

Project Deadpost website gave the film a score of 90% calling it an "ultra-low budget, brilliant, scary little film from Uruguay that outdoes many big budget contenders".^[8]

See also

• List of films featuring home invasions
• List of submissions to the 84th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of Uruguayan submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

References

External links

• {{cite web|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20111201223601/http://www.lacasamuda.com/|archivedate=December 1, 2011|title=Official website|url=http://www.lacasamuda.com|date=2010}}
• {{IMDb title|1646973|The Silent House}}
• {{AllRovi movie|517697|The Silent House}}

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